Tencent Music Entertainment Group has announced its Q1 financial results.
The Chinese streaming giant increased revenues 39.4% year-on-year to RMB 5.74 billion (£647 million) in the first three months of 2019. Operating profit was RMB 1.15bn (£129m), an increase of 22.9% year-over-year.
Mobile monthly active users for online music hit 654m, up 4.6% year-on-year. Paying users for online music reached 28.4m, up 27.4%.
However, monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) dipped to RMB 8.3 (93p). ARPU has been an industry issue raised by rights-holders including Warner Music.
Spotify recently passed 100m subscribers, while Apple Music has reported strong growth.
"We started 2019 with solid first quarter results and strong growth," said Cussion Pang, CEO of Tencent Music. "Our businesses recorded healthy growth rates driven by product innovation, content diversification, and technological advancement. During the past few quarters, we constantly expanded our online music subscriber base while steadily increasing our subscriber retention rate. As our users increasingly consume music content through streaming services, we are riding on this trend to gradually transition into a pay-for-streaming model over the coming years.
“We also strengthened our market leadership in music-centric social entertainment by focusing on product innovation and enhancing user experience through data analytics. We remain committed to investing in the provision of premium content as well as innovative product features. We believe that these investments will significantly enhance the level of user engagement for our services and sustain our long-term growth going forward."
Tencent Music also announced that Guomin Xie has tendered his resignation as the company's co-president and director due to personal reasons, effective June 6, 2019.
It has also named Zhenyu Xie, co-president and company board member, as chief technology officer.
FOLLOW 
