Tencent to launch its 1st music entertainment awards

Tencent Music Entertainment will launch its first Tencent Music Entertainment Awards (TMEA) on Dec 8, announced the company's CEO Cussion Pang. The awards ceremony will be held in Macao.

The upcoming awards mark the music giant's effort to boost its original content and celebrate the industrial changes of the country.

According to PC Pan, vice-president of Tencent Music Entertainment Group, Content Co-op and Rights Management, the ceremony wil l see the performances of pop artists from international music companies, such as Universal Music Group, Sony Music, South Korea's SM Entertainment, France's Believe Digital and local indie record label, Modern Sky. The group will soon reach an agreement with William Morris Endeavor, one of the largest, and the oldest, global talent agencies based in New York, to help discover potential talent and musicians.

Pan also said that the company had mapped out plans to boost the music market by combining music with films and video games, thus breaking the boundaries and barriers between music, film, video games and other forms of entertainment.

"It is an important and dynamic time for music in China. With the support of the big data, including music trends analysis, and the advanced artificial intelligence technologies, we want to break down walls among different entertainment industries," says Pan in Beijing. "We will work together with our partners to build an open ecosystem and explore new industry opportunities."

According to Tencent Music Entertainment Group's second quarter 2019 financial report, the company -- which has three major online music services in China: QQ Music, Kugou Music and Kuwo Music -- has 31 million paying online music users, up 33 percent year-on-year. The company ended the second quarter with 652 million mobile monthly active users. Last December, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange.