Alibaba Aims Big At China’s Music Industry

Jul 20, 2025 CFM BAT, Daily, Industry 0

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BEIJING July 20, 2025 - Chinese Internet titan Alibaba Group continues to bulk up its entertainment offerings by launching a new music division Alibaba Music, led by composers and music producers Gao Xiaosong and Song Ke.

The group said Ali Music would integrate with other Ali’s music operations including Xiami 虾米 and TTPod 天天动听 to offer better products and services.

Push further into the music industry

Alibaba established its music division in early 2013 and soon acquired Xiami, a major music-streaming site in China. At that time, Xiami had around 15 million registered members and about 7 million monthly active users.

Its scale is relatively modest compared with Kuwo and QQ music, but Xiami music has a different market position as it features not only the popular songs but also niche songs that are hard to find elsewhere.

At the end of 2013, Alibaba purchased another mobile music player app TTPod, which boasts a much larger user base than Xiami. TTPod has already had more than 100 million members by the end of 2012 and the number hit 200 million half a year later.

It is expected that Ali Music will account for a 15 percent market share after its restructure with Xiami targeting at artistic youth while TTPod aiming at the masses, which means it will rank third after Haiyang Music Group, a merger of Haiyang, Kuwo and Kugou, and Tencent’s QQ Music.

Gao and Song to lead the unit

Gao Xiaosong will serve as the president of Ali Music while Song Ke will step in as CEO. Both Gao and Song joined Ali Music from Evergrande Music where Gao acted as music director and Song was managing director. The two helped Evergrande Music emerge from a startup into the powerhouse that it is today.

Gao was first known for his campus folk ballads in the 1990s and later directed several films including WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWER GONE and MY HEART FLY. He was appointed Director of Entertainment at Sohu.com in 2000 and a year later, he joined Sina.com from Sohu.com.

He then became a judge on a bunch of talent shows like CHINA’S GOT TALENT and SUPER GIRL and launched his own talk show MORNING CALL explaining different aspects of American culture on Chinese leading video site Youku, with nearly 200 million views so far.

Recently Gao signed with LeVision Pictures earlier this year and is preparing for his first project in this company THE ROOMMATE WHO SLEEPS IN MY UPPER BUNK based on a song he wrote in the 1990s.

Gao and Song are expected to combine Alibaba’s in-house data with their vast web of contacts to help Alibaba penetrate the music business, said people familiar with this matter.

A spate of licensing deals

As China’s regulator has announced stricter rules on music copyrights, major players have been racing to get more licensing deals to beef up their online offerings.

Ali struck a digital music distribution deal with BMG, the music division of Germany’s Bertelsmann, Europe’s largest media firm, earlier this year. The deal gives over 2.5 million songs’ copyrights to Ali.

Before that, Xiami and TTPod have already signed agreements with several record labels including Rock Records, HIM International and Music B’in Music, which means Ali is able to carry songs from artists including S.H.E, Mayday, Chang Chen-yue and Fish Leong.

In the US, major music services boast millions of paying subscribers for online streaming. Take Spotify for example, it has passed 15 million paid users earlier this year — or a 25 percent conversion rate.

But in China, currently all music streaming apps have free tiers that hardly have any restrictions on listening. Xiami costs 15 yuan a month for downloading any music while QQ music and Kuwo costs 10 yuan for the premium services like downloading high-fidelity sound.

 

 

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