QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo reach the largest paying music audience on earth. ToneGrid delivers your catalog into all three on a certified DDEX feed, with Simplified Chinese metadata, per-territory rights control and monthly royalty reporting, under your own brand.
腾讯音乐 · QQ音乐 · 酷狗音乐 · 酷我音乐 · 全民K歌 · JOOX
127.4M
Paying music subscribers on TME at the close of 2025
500M+
Monthly active users across QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo
20M+
Super VIP subscribers on the premium tier
~2 days
Typical dispatch time from your approval to the store
Audience figures as reported by Tencent Music Entertainment Group in its full-year 2025 and first-quarter 2026 results, via Music Ally and Music Business Worldwide. Dispatch time is the ToneGrid delivery window measured from your own approval, and excludes Tencent's content review. Last reviewed .
Tencent Music does not take catalog directly from individual artists or labels. Every release arrives through an approved distribution partner on a certified DDEX feed, and passes a content and rights review before it can go live. Three things decide whether that goes smoothly: whether your metadata carries Simplified Chinese fields, whether your rights position in the territory is documented and clean, and whether your delivery channel reports state back per store rather than as a single aggregate status.
ToneGrid handles all three as infrastructure. You upload once, select Tencent Music alongside every other store in your network, and the platform localises the label copy, screens the release, packages it as DDEX ERN and delivers it directly into QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo. The revenue that comes back reconciles against the same rights record and pays out on the same monthly cycle as the rest of your catalog.
Tencent Music is not one app. It is a portfolio, and each surface behaves differently. A single ToneGrid delivery reaches the mainland trio and feeds the karaoke layer, with the international service one checkbox away.
QQ音乐
Mainland China
Tencent Music's flagship service and the default music app for a large share of the WeChat and QQ ecosystem. Strongest for premium subscriptions, digital album sales and artist pages.
酷狗音乐
Mainland China
The largest of the three TME apps by monthly active users, with deep reach into second and third-tier cities and a heavy live-streaming and karaoke culture.
酷我音乐
Mainland China
TME's third pillar, with a long-form audio and radio-led audience. Useful catalog surface for back-catalog and non-Mandarin repertoire.
全民K歌
China + diaspora
Tencent's social karaoke platform. User covers and duets turn a single track into thousands of user-generated performances, which is one of the fastest discovery loops in the Chinese market.
JOOX
Hong Kong + Southeast Asia
Tencent's international service, with leading positions in Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Africa. The natural second step once your catalog is live in the mainland.
China is one selection inside the same release workflow that reaches Spotify, Apple Music, NetEase Cloud Music, TikTok, Boomplay and every other store on the network.
See the full DSP network arrow_forwardPlenty of distributors list Tencent Music on a store grid. Far fewer actually get catalog through it cleanly, because the Chinese market asks for things a Western-only pipeline never had to build: a second script for every title, a rights position that survives scrutiny in a specific territory, and a channel that tells you what happened to each individual release.
The result is catalogs that sit half-delivered, artist names that no Chinese listener can search for, and revenue lines nobody can reconcile. These are the four failure points, and what the infrastructure does about each.
Chinese listeners search in Simplified Chinese. A release delivered with Latin-script fields alone will ingest and then quietly fail to be found.
What we do: parallel Simplified Chinese title, artist and album fields ship alongside the original, with pinyin transliteration for search and a genre mapping onto the local taxonomy.
A worldwide grant on paper is not the same as a documented right to exploit a recording and its underlying composition in China. Covers, samples and sub-publishing are where deliveries stall.
What we do: territory is set per release and per store, cross-checked against the recorded rights position before packaging, with ownership, splits and payees held on the same record. See rights management.
Lyrics, artwork and undisclosed AI content are reviewed more closely than on most Western stores. A rejection at the store is expensive: it costs you the release window and, repeated, your standing on the channel.
What we do: a pre-delivery screening stack catches it first. Audio fingerprinting across 100M+ tracks, AI label-copy review, artwork moderation, lyric screening and DDEX schema validation, all before dispatch. See the screening stack.
A single aggregate delivery status tells you nothing about China specifically, and a China revenue line you cannot map back to a release is a line you cannot pay out on with confidence.
What we do: per-store state (Submitted, Accepted, Live) with a webhook on every transition, and consumption and revenue that reconcile track by track against the rights record that generated the delivery.
Six stages, all of them instrumented. Nothing routes through an aggregator middle layer on the way.
Upload a release through your portal, the REST API, an MCP-connected agent, or a bulk DDEX drop. One asset set serves every store you deliver to, China included.
Parallel Simplified Chinese title, artist and album fields sit alongside the Latin-script original, with pinyin where it helps search and a genre mapping onto the local taxonomy.
Audio fingerprinting, AI label-copy review, artwork moderation, lyric screening and a territory-versus-rights cross-check all run inside your own queue. The tooling flags; your team decides. Nothing leaves for China until someone on your side approves it, and ISRCs are issued at that moment rather than at submission.
The release is built into a schema-validated DDEX ERN package with the deal terms, monetisation policy and territory set that the Chinese channel expects.
Dispatch runs over a certified direct SFTP feed into Tencent Music, reaching QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo. No third-party aggregator sits between your catalog and the store.
Per-store status moves from Submitted to Accepted to Live, with webhooks on every transition. Consumption and revenue flow back into the royalty engine and reconcile against the same rights record.
The delivery parameters your supply-chain lead will ask about, published rather than hidden behind a sales call.
| Parameter | Tencent Music | JOOX |
|---|---|---|
| Surfaces reached | QQ Music, Kugou, Kuwo, WeSing | JOOX |
| Delivery method | DDEX, direct | DDEX, direct |
| ERN version | ERN 4.2 | ERN 4.2 |
| Ingestion protocol | SFTP | SFTP |
| Channel certification | verified Certified | Standard |
| Territory set | Asia, configurable per release | Asia, configurable per release |
| Content types | Audio | Audio |
| Dispatch lead time | ~2 business days from your approval | ~2 business days from your approval |
| Status reporting | Per store, webhook on each transition | Per store, webhook on each transition |
| Royalty reporting | Monthly, by store, territory, track and payee | Monthly, by store, territory, track and payee |
Store-side review and publication timing sit with the platform and are not guaranteed by the delivery channel. Channel parameters are current as of August 2026 and may be revised as store requirements change.
Every item below is validated in your queue before dispatch, so a rejection never arrives from the store instead.
Every check above runs inside your own QC queue, severity-tiered and audit-trailed. The platform never approves a release on your behalf: a problem is fixed by your team rather than bounced back by Tencent.
See the QC workflow arrow_forwardYou are not buying a China connector. You are buying the distribution platform your whole operation runs on, with China wired into it.
Your domain, your logo, your terms, your pricing. Artists and sub-labels sign in to your platform and never see an underlying vendor name anywhere in the product or the emails it sends.
White label arrow_forwardThe artist portal runs in 19 languages including Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and Indonesian. A Chinese-language roster works in Chinese, from onboarding through to the payout statement.
Platform features arrow_forwardDirect DDEX feeds to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, YouTube Music, TikTok, Tidal, Deezer, NetEase, Boomplay, Audiomack and the long tail most networks skip. Add China without changing how anything else works.
DSP network arrow_forwardMulti-level splits down through sub-labels, featured artists and producers. Monthly statements by store, territory, track and payee. Payouts 10 to 15 days after the earning month closes, by wire, PayPal, Payoneer or regional rails.
Rights and royalties arrow_forwardFingerprinting against 100M+ tracks, stream-pattern anomaly detection, account trust scoring and catalog-spam detection. Protecting a Chinese channel matters as much as protecting a Western one.
Fraud detection arrow_forwardEverything the dashboard does, the API does. Versioned, rate-limited, sandboxed, with per-store delivery webhooks so your own systems know the moment a release goes live on QQ Music.
API docs arrow_forwardAn MCP server exposes the platform to AI agents, so an agent can prepare a release, check a delivery state or pull a royalty breakdown without a human in the loop.
MCP server arrow_forwardSub-labels, regional partners and client accounts each get their own isolated workspace with custom roles, a super-admin console above them and audit logging on every action.
For distributors arrow_forwardInfrastructure priced as SaaS from a fixed monthly fee. The upside from a China expansion stays with you and your artists rather than being shared back to the platform.
Pricing arrow_forwardOnce your catalog is China-ready, the metadata work is done and the rest of the region opens up with the same asset set. NetEase Cloud Music covers the other half of the mainland audience. JOOX carries Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. TikTok and the short-video layer drive discovery that feeds straight back into streaming.
That is the argument for treating China as infrastructure rather than a one-off integration: the second, third and tenth market cost you almost nothing once the first one is built properly.
NetEase Cloud Music
网易云音乐
Mainland China. Community and playlist-led, strong with younger and indie-leaning listeners.
JOOX
Hong Kong, SEA, South Africa
Tencent's international service, leading in Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.
TikTok
Global short-video
The discovery engine that turns a regional release into an international one.
Wider APAC
Japan, Korea, India, SEA
Melon, JioSaavn, Resso and the rest of the regional network, on the same workflow.
Take an existing roster into China without renegotiating your distribution stack or handing a share of the upside to a third party.
For labels arrow_forward lanOffer China as a headline feature of your own branded platform, with the multi-tenant controls and audit trail to support a client base at scale.
For distributors arrow_forward account_treeMigrate large back catalogs in bulk over DDEX ingestion, then push the whole library into the Chinese market in one operation.
For aggregators arrow_forwardTencent Music does not accept catalog directly from individual artists or labels. Delivery runs through an approved distribution partner over a certified DDEX feed. On ToneGrid you upload a release once, select Tencent Music in your store list, and the platform builds a DDEX ERN package, normalises the metadata for the Chinese market, and delivers it over a certified SFTP channel to QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo. Once your team approves the release, dispatch takes around two business days, plus Tencent's own content review.
A single Tencent Music delivery reaches QQ Music (QQ音乐), Kugou Music (酷狗音乐) and Kuwo Music (酷我音乐) in mainland China, and feeds WeSing (全民K歌) for user-generated covers. JOOX, Tencent's service for Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, is a separate store selection in the same release workflow.
Tencent Music Entertainment Group ended 2025 with 127.4 million paying music subscribers, up from 121 million a year earlier, and reported more than half a billion monthly active users across its online music services. Its premium Super VIP tier passed 20 million subscribers. That makes TME the largest music subscription business in the world by paying-user count.
Yes, if you want the release to be discoverable. Chinese listeners search in Simplified Chinese, and the TME apps index the local-script fields. ToneGrid carries parallel title, artist and album fields so you can supply Simplified Chinese alongside the Latin-script original, plus a pinyin transliteration where it helps search. Releases delivered with Latin-only metadata will still ingest, but they are far harder to find.
There are two separate reviews. The first is yours: every release sits in your own QC queue until someone on your team approves it, and the platform never approves on your behalf. Once you approve, dispatch to Tencent takes about two business days. Tencent then runs its own content and rights review before the release goes live, which commonly adds a few more days and can take longer for lyrics-heavy repertoire, cover versions, or releases whose rights grant needs checking. Every state change is reported back per store, so you see Submitted, Accepted and Live for Tencent Music specifically rather than a single generic delivery status.
You do. Every release stops in your own QC queue before it can be delivered, and only your team can approve it. The platform supplies the evidence, not the verdict: audio fingerprinting results, AI label-copy findings, artwork and lyric flags, DDEX validation errors and a territory-versus-rights cross-check, each severity-tiered with a full audit trail of who decided what and when. Nothing is auto-approved and nothing is delivered to Tencent Music on your behalf. ISRCs are issued at the moment your team approves, not at submission, so an unapproved release never consumes an identifier.
Yes. Territory is set per release and per store. You can grant China only, exclude China from an otherwise worldwide release, or run a China-inclusive worldwide grant, and the rights layer records who controls the recording and the composition in that territory. Splits and payees are stored against the same rights record, so the China revenue line reconciles against the same ownership data as everything else.
Tencent Music revenue lands in the same royalty engine as every other store. Statements are produced monthly, broken down by store, territory, track and payee, with splits applied automatically down through sub-labels and featured artists. Payouts run on a monthly cycle, 10 to 15 days after the earning month closes, in USD, with wire, PayPal, Payoneer and regional rails available.
Yes. ToneGrid is white-label infrastructure. Your artists and sub-labels sign in to your platform, on your domain, with your logo and your terms. The Chinese-market delivery, the metadata normalisation, the QC and the reporting all run underneath without your clients ever seeing an underlying platform name. Your artist portal also runs in Simplified Chinese, so a Chinese-language roster never has to work in English.
Chinese platforms apply a stricter editorial review than most Western stores. The most common causes of rejection are unclear rights on cover versions and samples, lyrics that fall outside local content rules, artwork carrying third-party logos, URLs or social handles, keyword-stuffed or inconsistent metadata, and undisclosed AI-generated material. ToneGrid screens all of this before dispatch: audio fingerprinting against a catalog of over 100 million tracks, an AI label-copy review, artwork moderation and DDEX schema validation, so problems surface in your queue rather than as a rejection from the store.
The Tencent Music channel is included on every plan, on the same flat monthly fee as the other 220+ stores. No revenue share, no per-territory surcharge, no separate China contract.