Music copyright is a piece of fat, no one on the platform will let go easily. NetEase, Inc Yun Music and Tencent Music successively reached a cooperation with Universal Music Group (Universal Music Group, referred to as UMG) on August 11.

According to official information, NetEase, Inc Yun Music will be licensed from Universal Music's massive music library and extended to its community product, Mlog, and the two sides will jointly carry out more in-depth and extensive cooperation in more areas such as music products, services and promotion.

On the other hand, Tencent Music renewed the multi-year copyright licensing strategic cooperation agreement with Universal Music Group to deepen the partnership. The two sides will set up a joint venture music label to jointly explore and train emerging musicians. In addition, the scope of authorization includes scenes such as national singing and online music live platform.

As the largest record group in the world in the 20th century, Universal Music has the music library licenses of many domestic and foreign flagship musicians, such as Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Jacky Cheung, Eason Chan, Stefanie Sun, Zhang Huimei, Teresa Teng, Leslie Cheung, Faye Wong and many other domestic and foreign musicians.

Universal Music cooperated with NetEase, Inc Yun Music and Tencent Music respectively, breaking the previous situation in which Universal only cooperated exclusively with Tencent Music Entertainment Group on Chinese mainland. It also means that NetEYun Music no longer has to pay extra license fees to Tencent to obtain the copyright resources of Universal Music.

The music copyright license agreement is usually re-signed every two to three years, and this cooperation coincides with the expiration of the copyright cooperation between Tencent Music and Universal Music. NetEyun Music, which is the first echelon but has been repeatedly strangled by copyright, naturally will not miss a new round of copyright contention.

Prior to this, Tencent, who also owns the exclusive rights of Warner, Sony Group Corp and Universal Music, holds about 5 million exclusive music rights and has a great say in the domestic music copyright market. But at the same time, it is also faced with huge copyright payment fees. In 2017, Tencent spent $350 million and $100m on Universal Music's exclusive rights in three years, more than ten times the price offered by Universal Music.

Although Tencent has been guarding against copyright through capital, the high premium copyright cooperation undoubtedly aggravates the competitive cost of the platform, and such a huge investment fails to achieve the same amount of return in the income of music services. Therefore, as the music platform turns to explore diversified business models, music copyright is no longer a rarity, and the buyer's market tends to be more rational.

Although the online music giants' copyright competition for the three major music groups has eased somewhat, the competition for differentiation is bound to intensify in the future.

NetEYun Music, which has been repeatedly "stuck in the neck" because of copyright issues, started the buy-and-buy model this year after getting an investment of $700m from BABA. He has successively cooperated with Studio Ghibli and Rolling Stones, and won the rights to popular variety music such as "the year of the Singer", "our Band", "Hi to sing", and "the third season of the Voice". In addition, NetEyun has been supporting original musicians and cultivating more copyright of new head songs to achieve self-production and self-sale.

On the other hand, Tencent Music is also constantly expanding the circle. Not only hold the exclusive music rights of ace Jay Chou and "Summer of the Band" and "China's New Rap", but also build core business lines around the dimensions of digital music, online singing, live music and original copyright, enter the audio field of army commanders, and strengthen the content supply of audiobooks.

In addition to the two top players, other players are also working secretly. In March this year, Tmall, owned by BABA, announced that it had reached a cooperation with Taihe and Rolling Stones. Douyin and Kuaishou Technology also won the music rights of Jay Chou and other Jewell singers, and extended their tentacles to overseas music rights.

From the dispute over copyright content to the more diversified users now, for music platforms, it is important to build a solid copyright moat by buying and buying, but they know how to dig the applicable scene of music. use copyright to reconstruct content, original products and ways of play to form differentiated competition in order to survive for a longer time when a new stage comes.