NetEase Cloud Music Raises $600M As Users Jump 200M In 12 Months To 600M

NetEase Cloud Music has completed a $600 million funding round to take on Spotify partner Tencent Music in China and Asia's exploding streaming music market. NetEase boasts 600 million registered users, adding 200 million over the last twelve months.

Launched in April 2013, NetEase Cloud Music has one of China's most active music platforms,  as well as one of the largest catalogs of user-generated content. NetEase actively supports original musicians and fosters the growth of independent music on the platform. Today, over 70,000 independent musicians have uploaded over 1.2 million songs to the platform.

With a population of 1.4 billion and upward trends in consumption, China's recorded music market is expected to expand considerably. China's recorded music market was 45 times smaller than that in the U.S. in 2017, and China's per capita spending on recorded music is projected to quadruple from 2017 to 2023, according to iResearch. 

New Investors include  strategic partner Baidu, General Atlantic, Boyu Capital and others. Chinese internet commerce giant NetEase [NASDAQ:NTES}  remains the controlling shareholder of the NetEase Cloud Music business.