Top 5 Chinese Music Apps

Spotify had reached 140 million monthly active users (MAU) worldwide. This number fades in comparison to music streaming services in China: the most popular music app in China, KuGou, had almost double the number.

What is interesting about China’s music streaming is that they are all free. Most of the apps make  money by offering subscriptions for better audio quality, ads, concert tickets, virtual gift-giving, and song purchases. Chinese fans are enthusiastic to make the industry successful. In only 3 days of its release, Katy Perry’s album “Witness” ramped up 1.3 million purchases on China’s leading music apps, with NetEase Music taking the lead.

Here is the top list of China’s hottest music apps selected by WeChat Apply team

1. KuGou (酷狗)

KuGou’s karaoke feature (Screenshot from KuGou app)

KuGou, meaning Cool Dog, made its way to the top range by appealing to a very wide audience, in particular those in small towns, according to a report from Sixth Tone. This means that a large portion of their content is dedicated to square dancing tunes and KTV by local hipster population. KuGou has  won users by integrating KTV streaming which enables users to receive “song coins” that can be transferred into real currency. Users can comment on songs through “bullet screens” (弹幕) where comments stream across the video, listen, watch, and interact through the social platform.

Although the app has 228 million MAU, Kugou is still figuring out how to earn money, but it has been earning from their live streaming service Fanxing. KuGou and KuWo are both owned by the China Music Corporation which merged with Tencent’s QQ Music in July 2016.

2. QQ Music (QQ音乐)

QQ is Tencent’s very first social product. It started out as an instant messaging tool back in 1998. Although QQ Music shares some  same features as Kugou, such as radio, KTV, and live streaming. It caters to a more urban crowd. QQ Music also offers articles and enables users to watch music videos, concerts, and interviews with famous musicians, including international stars such as Linkin Park.

The app has 211.43 million users. It owes its success to Tencent’s huge presence in the Chinese market, including WeChat. This enabled the service to strike deals with major record labels and allow its users to buy concert tickets through its payment service.

3. KuWo (酷我)

KuWo is an app with a focus on KTV streaming. The App hosts KTV tournaments with cash rewards. It also streams and broadcasts popular talent shows and comedies. KuWo also reserves a part of its app for China’s rising DJs.

KuWo offers a wealth of video content bordering on trashy which users can comment through bullet screens (Screenshot from KuWo)

Like other apps, KuWo offers song purchases and subscriptions. It tries to make money with in-app gaming and its own brand of headphones and speakers. The app has 107.72 million MAU.

4. NetEase Cloud Music (网易云音乐)

What differentiates NetEase Music from other apps is its stronger focus on indie artists, enabling it to compete with internet giants like Tencent and Alibaba. Besides short videos, the app has social features that enable users to interact with performers which have profiles on the service. It also has a music streaming option for joggers called Run FM (跑步FM) that selects music with a BPM rate that matches the listener’s running tempo. Aside from music, users can listen to podcasts and watch videos.

With 62.7 million MAU, NetEase is the first music service Unicorn securing RMB 750 million in Series A financing in April 2017.

5. Xiami Music (虾米音乐)

Xiami started off as a P2P platform but had to abandon the model due to copyright regulation. Recently the service added more niche content by featuring emerging musicians with original creations. It has launched The Undiscovered Nationwide Spotlight music program, a talent search where users can explore and select their favorite out of more than 6000 artists.

Xiami Music, with 14.4 million MAU, is owned by Alibaba along with another music app called Alibaba Planet (阿里星球).

No different to other online battlefields in China, Music Apps will see more intense competition in 2018. Let’s stay tuned to see who will be up or down the list this year.

About WeChat apply

WeChat apply is an award winning China WeChat digital marketing agency based in Sydney.Working across all aspects of the marketing solutions like WeChat promotion, WeChat Official Account Registration, WeChat KOL, WeChat Mini Program Ad. and so on, we will ensure you have a solid marketing strategy together with perfectly delivered campaigns. Wechat apply  will transform your China online marketing to increase your lead generation, brand awareness and market engagement.

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If you’ve planned marketing activity in China, you’ll know by now that the digital landscape is vast, complex and ever-changing. This month we take a look at a new platform that is a huge player in the youth market.

Douyin, another name Tik Tok, is a short-video App with powerful editing capabilities. It enables users to add music and special effects to their videos to make them more interesting and creative. It is now the No.1 free short-form video streaming app in China.

As the cost of acquiring online customers is getting higher and higher,  it is becoming harder to  to expand the customer base. It is an urgent issue to tangle by offline business to connect with online users and to achieve conversions.

2018 witnessed people’s attention shifting to short video platforms. As a leader in the field, Douyin rises to be a new online traffic hub. How could the businesses catch the bonus of the short video marketing?

On October 30, WeChat Apply representative attended Douyin Blue V Ecosystem Conference in Beijing Hilton Hotel where Douyin introduced its functionality and released a number of case studies of Douyin’s enterprise official account in details. We had some useful take-aways to share with our blog readers. During the conference, Point of Interest (POI) function was referenced to be a sharp tool to help off-line businesses.

POI function enables businesses to obtain exclusive location icon in Douyin video. Click on the icon, users can see all the video content of the account owner.  Businesses can recommend products, coupons, shop events to users through their POI pages.

POI page establishes a bridge between offline businesses and online users. While guiding users to browse videos, it helps users get the relevant information about the business. It shortens the time for users to explore. It improves conversion efficiency and effectively guides users to the offline stores. We summarised 3 effective approaches in this blog.  Hopefully they would be helpful on your China marketing practice.

Approach 1: POI + DOU Paid Ad: Let more target users see your store

Flowery Courtyard was a local holidy inn in Xishuangbanna, a forest region in South West China, It had no regular customer base and lacked online tractions before they launched their Douyin Campaign.

Flowery Courtyard uses the daily life of a budding pet as an unique video content and uses POI function to publish video with store information. To enhance the exposure, the business also uses DOU paid ad function to amplify the promotion content. The DOU paid ad function was purchased to push recommended content to those interested users selected by Douyin smart big data demographics. During the 3 month period,  23% of new customers were converted via this combination approach.

Tips: The core competence of POI with DOU paid ad function is based on high-quality content relevant to user’s preferences. It has to be accurate targeted and then improves the probability of fans coming to the store to consume. It is a good choice for offline stores to get exposed widely and to find target people quickly and accurately.

Approach 2:  POI+ Online Coupons, close the user consumption loop

The Old Wharf is a 17-year-old hot pot restaurant chain in China. It has nearly 100 stores in the country. The chain is proud of its wide brand distribution, high visibility and high frequent customer visits. During the National Day season, the Old Wharf made a good use of  the POI function and online coupon function. The campaign led to a significant increase of guests numbers in restaurants nation wide.

The Old Wharf firstly chose a 200k fans base dining related KOL  to preheat the campaign. the KOL draw users to to visit their Douyin POI page. Upon arriving at the page, customers can get online coupons to be redeemed at the Old Wharf selected offline stores.

Through the combination of displaying online coupons and POI, the Old Wharf attracted users enter their offline stores repeatedly. the guests were encouraged to shoot and share their own video inside the restaurants. It worked very well on attracting young consumers.

One of the Old Wharf restaurants got more than 13,000 visits in 20 days. The store sales increased rapidly.

Using the combination of “POI + card vouchers”, online traffic is successfully converted offline, stores won by gaining store consumptions and customer won by enjoying discount coupons.

Tips: The core of POI + voucher sits in the display of campaign activities and specific store information, which triggers users’ willingness to purchase. the following case study Black Valley will show you how to riase relevant topics, then integrate businesses’ selling points with your target users’ interest points.

Approach 3: POI+ Topics, Use hot topics to attract user generated content

Black Valley is a tourist attraction in Chongqing, a tire 1 city in China South West.  They raised keyword topics such as “heat dissipation”, “red seedlings”, “cooling down” and so on. Users can see the store POI page when they participate in the topics. Users can see the scenic intro, photos, address, business hours, and can call up for inquiries. Black Valley invited local KOL Miss Red Miao to shoot live videos on site and interact with the passing-by tourists. They also encourage tourists to shoot the imitate videos at the same shooting spot where the really hot KOL video was firstly shot. Black Valey gave those participants incentives to share their imitate videos, therefore increasing users  creativeness and sharing.

One piecd of user generated video reached 2.5million times. With high participation topics and interesting video content, Black Valley successfully spurred fans’ interest, shortened the communication path and increased online conversions.

Tips: POI+ Topics work well for the brands relevant to hot topics. The hot topics can attract online users to participate, then push up the topics to be an explosive one, therefore gathering high visits and exposure.

Conclusion

Online users’ behavior path is see-attention-interest-search-action. Douyin simplified this process, enabling business  to reach users directly.  The introduction of the POI function not only shortens the brand marketing path but also improves communication efficiency.

As the short video becoming more popular, Douyin’s commercial ecosystem are closing the loop from marketing to sales, empowering businesses to keep progressing in marketing. Overseas brands should definitely keep a close watch on how Douyin’s commercial value is unfolding.

About WeChat apply

WeChat apply is an award winning China WeChat digital marketing agency based in Sydney. Working across all aspects of the marketing solutions like WeChat promotion, WeChat Official Account Registration, WeChat KOL, WeChat Mini Program Ad. and so on, we will ensure you have a solid marketing strategy together with perfectly delivered campaigns. Wechat apply  will transform your China online marketing to increase your lead generation, brand awareness and market engagement.

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Zombie WeChat Official Accounts to Disappear Online

Tencent made an official announcement on March 17 that WeChat official account automatic logout mechanism is about to go online, which means those non-active registered WeChat Official Accounts within 210 days will be automatically canceled.

Tencent stated that this move will directly improve the situation where nicknames/usernames are taken without being actively used.

It is understood that within 14 days after receiving the warning notification inside the official account, if the user has not logged in, or pinged the communication port, the account will be frozen.

At present, there are a total of more than 20 million WeChat official accounts. It is believed that there are a vast number of user IDs are not used actively. WeChat Apply estimates about 8%~10% of the existing official account names are registered by the people or organizations with speculation intent, they would have registered some brand names first, stopping the genuine brands from registering. It is wasting resources in the eyes of Tencent.

Tencent refused to give details about how many or percentage of those “Zombie” accounts. It is not hard to guess that Tencent is trying to improve its own social ecosystem and user experience. It is just another positive move made by Tencent recently – freeing up those reallocate resources of those names taken by those “Zombies”

About WeChat apply

WeChat apply is an award winning China WeChat digital marketing agency based in Sydney.Working across all aspects of the marketing solutions like WeChat promotion, WeChat Official Account Registration, WeChat KOL, WeChat Mini Program Ad. and so on, we will ensure you have a solid marketing strategy together with perfectly delivered campaigns. Wechat apply  will transform your China online marketing to increase your lead generation, brand awareness and market engagement.

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Impacting Messages from China 2018 National Congress

There are plenty of initiatives have been proposed since the currently undergoing China’s Annual National Congress (NPC) since its opening on 3 March, about politics, economy, education, military, cultural aspects and so forth.

WeChatApply team has just picked some key initiatives which we believe would have the significant impact on China’s consumer market in order to broaden your vision about what’s going to happen in China in next short or mid-term.

Tax cut on both individual and business

Since 2008 GFC, the State owned sector has enjoyed phenomenal growth thanks to leaning support from Central bank’s monetary policy while the private sector is shrinking their share in the whole economy. Offering tax cut for both individual and business is expected to improve personal and SME disposable income and encourage the private sector’s innovation,  therefore improve consumer spending power.

Individual income tax system will lift the tax-free bar as the government has recognized the increasing living expenses driven by the ever-expanding urbanization and economic growth. It also includes expanding deductions related to education and childcare.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang , on 5 March, promised to lighten the tax burden on businesses, pledging more than 800 billion yuan (S$167 billion ) in tax cuts.

Faster internet and lower fees.

The government will do more to speed up broadband and bring down internet rates to boost the development of a “Digital China”, said Mr Li at the opening of the annual session of the national Parliament.

The domestic data roaming charges will be abolished by 1 July this year and the rates for mobile internet services will be cut by at least 30 percent. Chen Xiongxiong, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will promote basic telecom companies to speed up the process of combing and adjustment of packages, system development and transformation ensure that users will enjoy faster and cheaper mobile internet connection

The move would absolutely boost up the already fast developing mobile e-commerce market in China.

Strengthen financial market regulation

The development of digital payment method in China has reshaped the Chinese people’s lives for the last decade. The Central bank has not only felt threatening pressure from mobile payment giant of Alipay and WeChat Pay, it is now more worrying about the abuse of virtual currency such as Bitcoin as a retail payment and investment instrument. The central bank currently does not accept or approve related services.

It does not like to create a speculative product, people have the illusion of overnight riches. The bank needs to consider the overall situation and not let the virtual money conflict with the current financial order.

New energy vehicles will also grow rapidly

Miao Wei, Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, stated that China’s new energy vehicle technology has greatly improved. Last year, the battery energy density reached twice the level of technology in 2012, and the price per kilowatt hour dropped by more than 70% from 2012. “As technology continues to advance and charging facilities continue to improve, new energy vehicles will continue to show rapid growth in the future.”

The sales volume of electric vehicles and new energy vehicles in China reached 770,000 with the total possessions exceeded 1.6 million, accounting for half of the world’s total in 2017. The development of electric vehicles in China is an important part of the transformation and upgrading of electric vehicles in the world. “Welcome that all countries’ electric vehicles come to the Chinese market so that we can all enjoy a wide range of products and diversified services.” Wan Gang, Minister of Science and Technology, said during the press conference.

NPC is scheduled to close on 20 March 2018. NPC is held annually at Capital Beijing during March, after Chinese New Year. Similar time, local congresses are also held at state and local governmental levels throughout the country.

About WeChat apply

Wechatapply is an award winning China WeChat digital marketing agency based in Sydney.Working across all aspects of the marketing solutions like WeChat promotion, WeChat Official Account Registration, WeChat KOL, WeChat Mini Program Ad. and so on, we will ensure you have a solid marketing strategy together with perfectly delivered campaigns. Wechat apply  will transform your China online marketing to increase your lead generation, brand awareness and market engagement.

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WeShop Available for Public Beta

WeShop, “Micro Choose” in Chinese language sense, is a mobile marketplace embedded in WeChat powered by mini programs, has been released for public beta in the first week of this March.

It is a joint venture by JD.com and online fashion retailer Meili, WeShop has reportedly got over 50,000 merchants and local Chinese on board on the platform. It is regarded as a strategic move to make online shopping more fun, exciting and fulfilling for Chinese consumers. It brings innovative social e-commerce features to shoppers and a vast set of tools to businesses that want to reach customers through more effective Chinese social media marketing

JD.com, the leading Chinese online retailer, had been added onto WeChat in 2014 as the “Shopping” channel under the Discover tab, and now the new venture powered by WeChat’s mini programs is strengthening JD’s current prioritized position on WeChat, helping merchants to reach a broader customer base. Users can easily get access to WeShop by entering the “Shopping” channel and tapping the “WeShop” button in the Chinese version of the app.

WeShop has yet made available the direct purchase or shopping features, while shoppers can directly communicate with the merchants by tapping on the chat button on the bottom of the merchant page, or even add the merchants as friends on WeChat.

The new JV is believed to amalgamate JD’s advantages in customer service, logistics, retail infrastructure and its quality/authenticity control with Meili’s social commerce leadership in female shopping landscape.

“The new platform will change the way that sellers target consumers and serve a wide range of underserviced consumers in China,” said Chen Qi, the CEO founder of Meili Inc., who has been named the chairman of the new joint venture.

WeShop has so far seen a significant number of local merchants, especially SMEs. While JD.com remain its main platform at JD.com, JD certainly is not afraid of making efforts to sell on WeChat. WeShop’s ambition is to revolutionize “social commerce” by removing the barrier for both merchants and consumers. A good chunk of the trade volume is expected to come from JD’s WeChat shopping entry point.

About Meili Inc.

Established in mid-2016, Meili Inc. primarily targets female customers, and includes several different platforms under it, including MOGU Street and Meilishuo, among other popular shopping sites. As the leader in Chinese social commerce, Meili Inc. is experienced in integrating community, content and e-commerce and has already leveraged this strength to achieve significant success within the WeChat ecosystem in the last year.

WeChatApply is specialized in building mini program and mobile e-commerce solution. If you have, come on to chat with us to find out more information to help extend your access to China’s rapid-evolving mobile shopping market.

Article Sourced from Timmy Chen, 2 March 2018 Technode

About Wechatapply

Wechatapply is an award winning China WeChat digital marketing agency based in Sydney.Working across all aspects of the marketing solutions like WeChat promotion, WeChat Official Account Registration, WeChat KOL, WeChat Mini Program Ad. and so on, we will ensure you have a solid marketing strategy together with perfectly delivered campaigns. Wechatapply  will transform your China online marketing to increase your lead generation, brand awareness and market engagement.

The post WeShop Available for Public Beta appeared first on WeChat Official Agency.

Tourism Australia Stands Top 10 Popular WeChat Moment Ad

“Australia isn’t just a place you see, it’s a place you feel”

WeChat just released the Top 10 popular WeChat Moment Ad in 2017. Tencent Advertising Unit conducted a survey contest in early February with more than 600,000 WeChat users participated in the voting.

The brands on the rally are (no particular order)

Adidas

Tourism Australia

BM

Dior

Dolce&Gabbana

Jimmy Choo

JD

TripAdvistor

Tencent 

Montblanc

Interestingly, the Top 10 have seen only two are China locally grown brands Tencent and JD, all others are international brands.

Apart from those deep pocket premium brands like BMW, Dior, JD, Tourism Australia stands out of the crowd. It was not a coincidence when record high 1.382million Chinese tourists came to Australia in the year of 2017.

The Ad appeared a bird eye look of an Australian beach – very Australian, wasn’t it? Once clicked, it opens up a short video hosted on an H5 page with carousel slider underneath, and certainly, there is a button that user can click on to follow Tourism Australian official WeChat account. The 30-second video was about a young Chinese couple taking tour in Australia, a male Aussie voice speaks in English with Chinese subtitle, “Australia isn’t just a place you see, it’s a place you feel”

Having some English elements in ad copy keeps the brand’s original taste. I can imagine had it been all Chinese speech and texts, the outcome would have been very different.  Tourism Australia made a right call on speaking the right messages to the target audience, more and more of whom are choosing independent travel and can understand English.

What exactly is WeChat Moment Ad?

Regards it as the equivalent of Facebook ads appearing on the timeline. Unlike banner ad, Moment Ad has brought a much more sophisticated way to reach the WeChat user timeline by directly buying access from WeChat. A brand can target users according to their location, interest, age, gender, device and phone network.

It supports texts description, image(s) and video,

Individual users can see up to one Moment ad every 48 hours. The ad will disappear within 6 hours if the user did not like, comment or click on the link. If the user interacts with the ad, this will increase the likelihood of his/her friend receiving the same ad. This viral effect will increase the number of target users. Very socially, a WeChat user can see their friends’ comments about the ad

Moment Ad can help advertiser to achieve Brand awareness, Click to convert (purchase or signup), Download app and Gain new followers

Since the beginning of 2018, WeChatApply has noticed Huawei Australia and BMW started on targeting Australian based WeChat users. It is a groundbreaking event for WeChat’s development at Australian Market since Tencent first made the ad available in China in 2015. Any brand who looks to take advantage of this tool, really have to start with getting an official verified account before able to even spend your marketing dollar. Unlike the easy and flexible admin offered by Western online social advertising, brands also need to go through WeChat’s advertiser application process in order to gain their qualification to advertise. Bear in mind that certain industries are completely banned and some are restricted.

Interested in this powerful way of placing your brand in front of targeted WeChat users?

WeChatApply team can help you with this process with our know-how and experience.

About Wechatapply

Wechatapply is an award winning China WeChat digital marketing agency based in Sydney.Working across all aspects of the marketing solutions like WeChat promotion, WeChat Official Account Registration, WeChat KOL, WeChat Mini Program Ad. and so on, we will ensure you have a solid marketing strategy together with perfectly delivered campaigns. Wechatapply  will transform your China online marketing to increase your lead generation, brand awareness and market engagement.

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Stand out of crowd

There are 14million corporate WeChat account in the WeChat world. How could one official acocunt stand out of this huge crowd?

WeChat closes transaction loop from , you name it, content marketing, click to buy, scan to pay, real time tracking, to close the deal and receive payment, and remarketing, customer service. etc..

What a brand needs to do is to close the loop of your overall customer journey for your product and services.

Once you have V official account status, you are able to develop WeChat pay, edit, WeChat Advertising Eligibility, red packet , web integration, a long list of advanced WeChat functions will be added to your marketing arsenal ,otherwise are impossible.

Which means it gives you’re a gateway to really put a WeChat centered and oriented China marketing strategy and you don’t lose data.

About Wechatapply

Wechatapply is an award winning China WeChat digital marketing agency based in Sydney.Working across all aspects of the marketing solutions like WeChat promotion, WeChat Official Account Registration, WeChat KOL, WeChat Mini Program Ad. and so on, we will ensure you have a solid marketing strategy together with perfectly delivered campaigns. Wechatapply  will transform your China online marketing to increase your lead generation, brand awareness and market engagement.

The post Stand out of crowd appeared first on WeChat Official Agency.

WeChat, owned by Tencent and known as Weixin in China, will total 494.3 million users in China in 2017, according to WeChatApply’s latest forecast.

Adoption of the platform is widespread among smartphone users, with an estimated 79.1% of handset owners accessing the app regularly in 2017. China’s mobile audience is very likely to communicate via WeChat; some 84.5%* of mobile phone users are expected to access the platform.

While any thought of WeChat as simply a communication tool , would be far from accurate. Users will spend more than one hour and half a day using WeChat this year, according to Tencent. In addition to messaging features like texting, video conferencing, as well as photo and video sharing, the app’s more advanced functions are primarily responsible for driving engagement. Give donations, Share Red Pocket money, online shopping, booking ride services, food ordering, checking your facilities bills and pay those bills, login third party platform using WeChat logins, etc. have made the platform an essential daily ecosystem for consumers breathe and live in China. It becomes people’s natural habit to browse through WeChat’s friends moments or digesting WeChat Official Account’s social posts while standing in life, seating on trains, waiting for food, etc.

Additionally, an April 2017 study from China Channel found that 83% of WeChat users access it for work and business purposes.

With WeChat’s large presence in China, WeChatApply expects 40%of the population (1.379 billion in 2016) and every 6 out of 10 Chinese internet users to regularly use the platform this year.

Tencent first launched WeChat in India five years ago, marking its first foray into international markets. So far, WeChat has done well in markets with a large population of expats from China, or with large populations of Chinese-speaking people, such as in US, Canada, Australia, Europe and South America. WeChat has effectively penetrated into its global market by introducing its Payment Solution WeChat Pay as the door opener to the non Chinese markets.

On the contrary, more and more overseas B2C, B2B businesses, education organizations, tourism groups, even government organizations are realizing the importance of the unique Chinese characteristics of social economy and are seizing the market entry opportunity provided by WeChat to target Chinese audience. For example, Study Adelaide, Tourism Australia, Macquarie University, City of Melbourne Council, Westpac and countless others have recently applied and set up their WeChat official account on which they build their Chinese language marketing content and strategy. Interested to learn more about how to get started? Seek advice from our professional team at WeChatApply, the official WeChat authorized partner looking after Asia Pacific and Oceania region.

*Data sources eMarketer post written by Corey McNair on 13 July 2017

About Wechatapply

Wechatapply is an award winning China WeChat digital marketing agency based in Sydney.Working across all aspects of the marketing solutions like WeChat promotion, WeChat Official Account Registration, WeChat KOL, WeChat Mini Program Ad. and so on, we will ensure you have a solid marketing strategy together with perfectly delivered campaigns. Wechatapply  will transform your China online marketing to increase your lead generation, brand awareness and market engagement.

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