Apple Music is tapping China’s short video app Douyin, one of the most popular Chinese apps of all sorts, to boost its subscriber base in China.
In addition to its domestic reception, Douyin is also the most downloaded iOS app in the first quarter of 2018 per analytics service Sensor Tower.
According to the partnership arrangement between Douyin and Apple, mainland China Douyin users who already subscribed to Apple Music, can now access to the latter’s full music library directly from the Douyin app; and for those who are not yet subscribers, Douyin and Apple Music will offer a 3 months free trial, the similar kind you can get from the Apple Music app per se.
Douyin is the first Chinese short video app to join the Apple Music partnership programme.
Douyin’s global app Tik Tok, which operates outside of China, has already been working with Apple to feature the ‘top hits’ and ‘trending’ songs that users often incorporate into their videos, which can be highly beneficial for artists looking to ride on the next ‘viral’ wave.
According to Shanghai Daily on August 10, Douyin has inked partnerships with a number of music publishers, such as Universal Music, Warner Music and Taihe Music, to add more than 10 million licensed songs into its music library. This is in a bid to combat pirated content, which can include music and animation.
Takeaways:
– The partnership appears more to be a marketing campaign for Apple Music to help the streaming service on board more Chinese users, who are more willing to pay for music services now.
– Apple Music has over 50 million users worldwide, yet its compeitor Spotify has more than 170 million users and north of 75 million paid users.
– Tencent Music is currently the largest music streaming service in China, however, Tencent has been seeing Douyin and Toutiao as a huge threat to its dominating position in social media, the two companies have went through rounds of execs spats before.
Editor: Ben Jiang