On August 12, Tencent Music Entertainment Group released its Q2 2025 financial results. The report revealed that Tencent Music achieved total revenue of RMB 8.44 billion in Q2 2025, representing a 17.9% year-over-year increase. Adjusted net profit reached RMB 2.64 billion, up 33.0% year-over-year, maintaining a steady upward trajectory.

In an era where online entertainment options are increasingly diverse and user attention is becoming more fragmented, delivering such impressive results is no easy feat for Tencent Music. However, beyond the surface-level data and growth figures, what deserves deeper examination is the underlying logic—how Tencent Music has built bridges between content supply and platform functionality, between product experience and user relationships, thereby establishing its growth trajectory and moving forward steadily.

**The "Effect" and "Cause" Behind Solid Growth**

Tencent Music's outstanding overall performance was primarily driven by the continued high-quality growth of its online music business. According to the financial report, online music subscription revenue reached RMB 4.38 billion in Q2 2025, up 17.1% year-over-year. The number of paying online music users increased from 117 million in the same period last year to 124.4 million, while monthly average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) rose from RMB 10.7 to RMB 11.7.

Notably, Tencent Music's super VIP membership base exceeded 15 million subscribers this quarter, earning widespread recognition and trust from users with deep music needs. This achievement reflects Tencent Music's continuous focus on users under its "dual-wing" strategy of content and platform—expanding supply on the content side while refining experience on the platform side. The company's diligent cultivation of causes is now bearing fruit.

Looking back at the early stages of the online music industry, platform competition centered on "content coverage," with companies competing on the richness of their music libraries. Today, content remains the foundation of platforms. In this regard, from collaborating with The Black Label and H MUSIC to continuously enrich K-pop content offerings, to renewing contracts with Chinese artists like Wang Feng and G.E.M. while exploring content co-creation and promotion models, and providing customized support for domestic and international artists, Tencent Music is reaching more diverse demographics and preferences. The driving force of its content business is becoming increasingly evident in its financial performance.

Meanwhile, Tencent Music is pushing "platform value" deeper and broader. This isn't simply about feature accumulation, but rather a reshaping of user relationships—by continuously refining platform functionality and super VIP benefits, responding precisely to user needs with more engaging features, interactive gameplay, and comprehensive, high-quality benefit content.

In Q2, super VIP membership exceeded 15 million, reaching a new milestone. This represents not just proof of Tencent Music's periodic growth, but validation of the effectiveness of its growth logic. It demonstrates that Tencent Music is gradually forging a clearer path in "connecting with users."

**Sound Upgrades and Innovation: The First Principles of Engaging Users**

If we unfold the evolution of online music platforms on a timeline, we'll find it consistently revolves around one thing—narrating the relationship between people and sound. Strengthening the "sound" component naturally follows first principles.

Over the years, user perception of sound has been progressively upgrading—from "hearing" to "hearing clearly" to "discerning differences." The former is primarily handled by the content layer, while the latter two reflect music fans' demands for "sound quality."

Notably, Tencent Music's financial report mentioned that high-quality audio and sound effects are among the most popular benefits for super VIP members. Sound upgrades and innovation may seem simple, but they actually involve coordination across technology, products, and even hardware ecosystems.

Audio quality improvements often accompany hardware iteration—the overall advancement of headphones, speakers, and codec protocols has raised users' baseline listening expectations. To impress users, platforms naturally need to provide matching solutions on the product side. Throughout its journey, Tencent Music has continuously raised industry standards in audio quality and effects.

For instance, while smartphone speaker performance continues to evolve, in actual external playback scenarios, increasing volume may cause distortion and frequency loss, degrading the listening experience. To address this, Kugou Music launched the "One-Touch Power Sound 2.0" feature, which pushes external playback volume to its limits while avoiding distortion and maintaining clear, full audio quality.

Kugou Music's recently launched Viper HiFi audio quality takes a more "hardcore" approach—using AI sound field optimization and high-resolution standards technology to provide users with an immersive experience of pure, high-fidelity music quality.

Additionally, AI has been introduced to karaoke scenarios, using multi-timbre generation technology to simulate multi-person chorus effects, achieving a leap in user experience.

It's worth noting that in-vehicle music scenarios are following the automotive industry's overall trajectory, replicating the evolution process that smartphones once underwent. In the past, in-vehicle scenarios primarily remained at the level of "being able to play music," but at this stage, with the intelligence of car infotainment systems and the intensified competition in car audio specifications, user perception demands have gradually shifted from "having music" to "good music" and "good experience."

Facing this trend, Tencent Music has both deepened cooperation with established automakers like Geely Holding Group and covered new car-making forces like Xiaomi. Taking the popular Xiaomi YU7, Xiaomi's first SUV, as an example, Tencent Music was among the first to "get on board" at launch, extending its consistent high audio quality to in-vehicle scenarios, responding to users' higher pursuits for in-car music.

**Expanding Content Experience Boundaries to Achieve Broader User Resonance**

For online music platforms, "sound" is certainly the foundation, but user expectations never stop there. After all, users are never just "listeners." For example, surrounded by concert lights and crowds, "listeners" briefly become "audience members"; during karaoke, they transform into "singers" in small groups; and in broader scenarios, some users engage as "music fans," immersing themselves in their passion.

How to understand these differences and accommodate them steadily tests a platform's fundamental capabilities. Tencent Music has clearly passed this test. Its super VIP service isn't limited to "listening" to music, but covers more diverse and comprehensive benefit content including listening, watching, interaction, and collection, ensuring every connection method has its resonance.

Taking top Korean artist G-DRAGON as an example, fans can listen to his comeback album "Übermensch" exclusively on Tencent Music, purchase official merchandise from his world tour for mainland China, and super VIP members have priority ticket purchasing privileges. Notably, the financial report revealed this was Tencent Music's first time organizing a major world tour, with the Macau concert alone attracting over 36,000 attendees.

Digital albums respond to the desire for "ownership"; concerts satisfy the craving for "interaction"; priority ticket purchasing protects the wish to "be present"; and merchandise addresses the need to "collect and commemorate" in the real world. The boundaries of music experience are being extended outward, ring by ring.

Following this path, in Q2, Tencent Music provided super VIP members with unlimited listening privileges for digital albums like JJ Lin and A-Lin's collaboration "Hold Me Tight in the Lunar Eclipse" and Jolin Tsai's "Pleasure." The company also collaborated with artists like Tan Jianci and Silence Wang to launch collectible Starlight Card merchandise series, satisfying the preferences of different groups including music fans, live event enthusiasts, and collectors.

This reflects Tencent Music's deep understanding of multi-demographic "users." Behind each benefit launch isn't just "doing a little more," but Tencent Music fully leveraging the diverse value of content, broadening the experiential forms and boundaries of the same content, providing ultimate satisfaction to users who love this musical content and artists.

Ultimately, Tencent Music at this stage is "cultivating" "understanding users" as the platform's fundamental skill, establishing deeper connections with broader music fans and music enthusiasts through an increasingly rich content ecosystem, collaborative deep cultivation of product innovation, and high-quality, comprehensive music services.

Building relationships through understanding, and nurturing growth through relationships—this is precisely the source of its growth certainty.