QQ Music

Tencent Music's streaming app for songs, with audiobooks and podcasts

First principle

People want the song in their head, right now. QQ Music lives up to its slogan, “listen to what I want”: a deep library, good sound, new songs daily, and a QQ or WeChat login.

The needs it meets

EntertainmentCore: Passing time and unwinding, carried off by stories, music and video.
Company: Not feeling alone: someone, or an AI, listening and answering.

Why it wins

Its catalog and NetEase's are now mostly licensed to each other, so the difference lies in a few top artists: Jay Chou's new digital album, for one, is sold on QQ Music.
Playlists and history follow the account, and years of liked songs make moving unappealing.
Song recognition, humming search, translated foreign lyrics and lossless audio: a tool for every step from finding a song to understanding it and hearing it well.
Audiobooks, podcasts, children's stories and sleep programmes are there too, so people open it even when they don't want music.

What keeps it ahead

Endless supply: Something new every day: uploads, a licensed library or AI.
Ecosystem: Preinstalled, or tied to an account or a bigger platform.
Switching cost: Your data, contacts or progress live here; leaving is costly.

How it makes money

SubscriptionsIn app purchases

Mostly memberships: music packs, Deluxe Green Diamond and Super VIP, billed monthly, unlock VIP songs and lossless sound; audiobook passes and digital albums are sold too, all through Apple on iPhone.

What a small team can take from it

The catalog takes money and licensing deals, and cannot be copied. What can be is making the keenest fans' support visible: buying Jay Chou's digital album unlocks exclusive profile decorations and special account numbers. A small team can give paying supporters a mark others can see.

This week

China: top grossing apps, number 3

updated 29 October 2026

Developer: Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Company Limited
Category: App · Music
Stores: App Store
First in a list: 29 October 2026

Sources

This is our analysis and judgement, drafted by an AI agent from the store pages and public sources and read by a person before it went up. Every figure has a source; where there is none, we give no figure. Found a mistake? Write to [email protected].

Back to the lists