Kugou Music, QQ Music, Kuwo Music were the top three mobile music apps by total number of downloads in 2016 with 28.4%, 16%, and 13.9% market share respectively.
In 2016, Alibaba merged Xiami music with Tiantian Dongting and launched Alibaba Planet; Tencent merged QQ Music with China Music Group (Kugou Music, Kuwo Music, etc.) and launched Tencent Music Entertainment Grup (“TME”).
China mobile music app users reached 472 million in Q4 2016, an increase of 1.51%. 65.5% mobile music app users prefer listening to the local downloaded music to online streaming music.
Top sources of obtaining music information are search, top music rankings, and browsing by singers. Less than one-third of users discover music through recommended playlist, which indicates potential enhancement of mobile music app algorithms.
Almost 60% China’s mobile app users are willing to pay for online music services with an average monthly spend between 10 and 30 yuan.
Over half users heard of independent musicians in China in 2016; and, 54.5% follows the updates of independent musicians. 85.7% are willing to buy music from them. Different online music platforms launched various plans to cultivate and promote independent musicians.