China’s Spotify plans to follow the Swedish music streaming company to Wall Street. Just three months after Spotify’s debut on the U.S. stock market news has broke that Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) is also gearing up for a public listing. TME is China’s leading music-streaming company which operates the country’s only three digital services QQ Music, Kuwo and KuGou.
Tencent, which has majority ownership of TME, is an immense $500 billion Chinese internet corporation with businesses all across the board. The parent company announced Sunday that it plans to spin off the music business onto a “recognized stock exchange in the United States through a registered public offering.” The price range and offering size have not been finalized but analysts have tagged TME with valuation estimates as high as $30 billion, a figure that is right on par with the $29.6 billion market cap of Spotify.
Without more financials, it’s tough to say what TME’s listing on the U.S. stock exchange will mean for either the Chinese music company or the global music-streaming market as a whole. But one point which may interest investors and music-industry executives alike is that TME and Spotify have direct investment in each other. Tencent and Spotify completed a stock swap last Devember which saw the Chinese company take a 9.1% stake in the Swedish one and in return, Spotify took 9 percent non-controlling equity interest in TME.
JQBX Jason
Jason is the Founder of JQBX. He loves all sorts of music but more specifically things that are easy to like. Things like Mac DeMarco, Beach House, Jonathan Richman, and Death Grips. He can usually be found hanging out in Indie While you Murder and r/indieheads.
