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Tag: warner music

  • Tencent Holdings rakes in $15 billion

    Tencent Holdings rakes in $15 billion

    Chinese eCommerce giant Tencent Holdings increased its revenues last year by 30 per to RMB101.9 billion ($US15.7 billion).

    Excluding its eCommerce business, the revenue increase was 38 per cent, to RMB102.2 billion.

    Tencent’s subsidiaries provide media, entertainment, internet and mobile-phone value-added services, and provide online advertising services in China.

    Chairman and founder Ma Huateng says its online game business had healthy revenue growth, mainly driven by smartphones, key PC titles and new client games launched during the year. The company’s social network revenues also grew, from increased digital content subscription services, QQ membership subscription services and virtual item sales.

    Revenues from online advertising shot up 110 per cent to RMB17.5 billion.

    Hong Kong- and Singapore-listed Tencent continued its traffic leadership in multiple online media categories such as video, sports, music, news and literature through partnering with premium content providers including the NBA, HBO, Paramount, Sony Music and Warner Music, and investing in original content.

    “During the year, we further executed our ‘connection’ strategy, bringing our own and our partners’ products and services to our consumers through cultivating an ecosystem around our core communication and social platforms,” says Ma in his chairman’s statement.

    Key initiatives for the group’s “internet-plus” ecosystem included:

    * Enriching products and services available within its platforms, such as introducing personal micro-loan products and municipal services like visa applications

    * Promoting online payment services

    * Growing mobile utility services, including security, a browser, an application store and strengthened infrastructural supports

    * Investing in equity stakes in leading companies in related internet verticals, such as Internet Plus Holdings.

    Industry trends

    Ma also noted a range of industry trends…

    “Messaging and social networking continued to rank as the highest time spent and widest penetration activities on smartphones, and evolved into increasingly relevant content-discovery media. Search queries moved primarily to mobile, and search remained an important content-discovery tool, along with application stores.

    “Online shopping became increasingly widespread, especially in lower-tier cities, and eCommerce transaction volumes sustained healthy growth rates.

    “Online advertising activity shifted decisively from PC to mobile, with particular growth in areas such as performance advertising on social networks, pre-roll advertising in video services, and in-feed advertising in news services.

    “Users proved increasingly willing to pay for digital content such as movies, TV series and music.

    “Mid/hard-core smartphone games, including PC game franchises moving to smartphones, boosted game-industry revenue.”

    Ma says China’s internet companies in sectors such as ride-hailing, classified listings, group buying, and online travel services competed with heightened intensity last year, leading to rapid user growth but reduced or negative profitability. “Consequently, several leading companies in these sectors consolidated with competitors, creating a wave of merger and acquisition activities.”

    There were more offline-to-online transactions last year which, together with the emergence of person-to-person payment transactions, contributed to substantial growth in online payments.

    Key platforms

    On Tencent’s key platforms, the QQ Wallet payment service gained popularity, with about 6 billion red envelopes exchanged within six days during the Lunar New Year holidays early this year.

    Qzone user activity benefited from enhanced features in areas such as sticker sharing and photo-album editing.

    There was year-on-year growth of 39 per cent for Weixin and WeChat together, with official accounts becoming a leading platform to connect users to content creators, merchants and advertisers.

    Weixin Pay also increased in popularity, with more than 32 billion red envelopes being exchanged within the six-day Lunar New Year holidays – growing by nine times year-on-year.

    Ma says the group’s social networks experienced 30 per cent revenue growth last year as digital content subscription services, QQ membership subscription services and virtual item sales were improved.

    “Our cloud service achieved more than 100 per cent year-on-year revenue growth as we promoted our services to key enterprise customers from a range of verticals such as eCommerce, O2O services, online games, online video and internet finance.”

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  • Warner Music Singapore to stop distributing CDs

    Warner Music Singapore to stop distributing CDs

    The Singapore office of Warner Music – one of the major music labels along with Universal Music and Sony Music – is no longer bringing in CDs for sale and distribution here.

    This is what insiders in the local music industry – retailers and other labels – have heard.

    When contacted, Warner declined comment.

    In the last year, it released albums by Stevie Nicks, Ed Sheeran, Jolin Tsai and Singapore’s JJ Lin, according to its website. Other local musicians signed to it include Reuby and hip-hop duo SleeQ.

    While the other labels are still bringing in CDs, Life understands that Sony no longer handles the storage and distribution of these CDs to shops here. It has engaged another company for those functions.

    A veteran in the music industry, who declined to be named, said Warner’s decision was made in July. Retailers have also been informed of the move, and they say it is likely due to falling CD sales worldwide.

    A spokesman for HMV Singapore says it was notified of Warner’s move a couple of weeks ago, and of Sony’s move last year.

    Said the spokesman: “We will need to make slight changes by importing the CDs in the case of Warner.

    “For Sony, we can still get them locally supplied by MM2 (the company engaged by Sony). But some titles may be late, or on a rare occasion, not released.”

    Mr Ho Chan Sian, 60, owner of Memphis Music, a CD shop in Coleman Street, learnt about Warner’s move two weeks ago.

    He says: “It will be more inconvenient for us because we will not be able to draw stocks from Warner like before. We will have to turn to wholesalers to get CDs of artistes under the Warner label.”

    Consumers in the United States, the world’s largest music market, bought 257 million albums last year, a drop of 11 per cent from 2013.

    At Universal, sales of physical CDs in Singapore for the first half of this year have fallen 8 to 9 per cent, compared to the first half of last year.

    Says Ms Kim Lim, the head of marketing and sales for Malaysia and Singapore at Universal Music: “The market has evolved from physical sales towards digital distribution.

    “Digital is more affordable and easier to access. The consumer can also get it more quickly, instead of having to wait for CD stock to be ready in stores.

    “There are also very few stores nowadays as retail store rents are increasing year by year.”

    Says Mr Ngiam Kwang Hwa, 55, managing director of record label and concert organiser Rock Records: “I can totally understand Warner’s position. To bring in a CD, you have to pay for freight, GST, the warehouse to store the CDs, as well as distribution cost. If the sales volume is not high enough, it actually doesn’t make financial sense to do so.”

    Both Universal and Rock still bring in CDs for distribution.

    Ms Lim says: “We still believe some albums – that have nice packaging, exclusive content and limited edition packaging – are collectible items.”

    But Mr Ngiam expresses concern that Warner’s move is the beginning of an unhealthy outlook for the industry.

    He says: “My worry is that another one of the big labels will also stop bringing in CDs. Then the distribution system might change, and we might be forced to react.”

    When contacted, music fans were not surprised by Warner’s move.

    Public servant Tan Wei Ye, 28, has not bought a CD in more than 10 years: “Nowadays, I buy my music mainly from iTunes. I also use Spotify, Soundcloud and Bandcamp, and listen to music on YouTube sometimes.

    “You can just buy the individual songs you want, instead of having to commit to the full 10 or 12 songs on a physical CD. It doesn’t make sense to go to the physical CD shop anymore.”

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