Tencent Music earnings

A live performance from G-Dragon, who’s poised to deliver additional Tencent Music-organized concerts during Q3 2025. Photo Credit: Nicole Voon

Continued subscription growth fueled a nearly 18% Q2 2025 revenue jump for Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), which now boasts north of 15 million SVIP paid users.

These and other performance particulars come from the Shenzhen-based company’s newly released second-quarter financials. As some know, core streaming has been Tencent Music’s chief focus for a while; on the other hand, revenue attributable to “social entertainment services,” housing livestreams and more, has been slipping for several quarters running.

In keeping with those points, the QQ, Kugou, and Kuwo operator reported generating $957 million (up 26.4% YoY) from streaming, of $1.18 billion overall, during the three-month stretch. The sum includes $611 million (up 17.1% YoY) kicked in by paid users, who numbered 124.4 million (up 6.3% YoY) in Q2, per the business.

Notwithstanding the relatively modest subscriber boost, “SVIP” customers have surpassed 15 million, as initially mentioned. The growing superfan side of Tencent Music’s model evidently helped drive an increase in average monthly revenue per paying user, to the tune of 9.3% YoY growth to CNY 11.7 (currently $1.63).

To reiterate the obvious, the figures underscore the Chinese music market’s often-discussed expansion and monetization potential. Less frequently considered: Tencent Music has racked up almost half as many subscribers in China as Spotify has globally.

And with 553 million online music MAUs (down 3.2% YoY) to its credit as of Q2 2025, TME looks to have room for additional conversions here. Furthermore, the Ximalaya parent’s advantageous access to China-based fans – Q2 delivered even more K-pop initiatives, among them a TME-organized “international grand concert tour for” G-Dragon – is also worth bearing in mind.

(The second quarter brought a Tencent Music partnership with DearU to boot; the two launched an “interactive community” called Bubble via QQ, thereby enabling “users to engage directly with hundreds of K-pop artists from” SM, JYP, and more.)

Meanwhile, Tencent Music is leveraging this same unprecedented market reach to bolster its SVIP subscriber base.

“Premium sound quality remains the most popular SVIP membership benefit,” TME relayed, emphasizing as well the contributions of “artist-centric privileges” such as “priority access to concert tickets.” Of course, multiple reports have pointed to both perks’ arrival on Spotify, but neither has hit the service yet.

Likewise on the horizon is an SVIP membership card tied to merch sold in malls, TME CEO Ross Liang explained during the corresponding earnings call.

“[W]e plan to launch the SVIP annual membership card for the shopping malls, especially for merchandise,” Liang said. “In other words, [we will] provide a discounted offering of the merchandise we have in our shopping malls.”

Back to Tencent Music’s second-quarter earnings report, the previously highlighted social entertainment services and other sources contributed about $222 million (down 8.5% YoY), the disclosure shows. Plus, advert revenue hiked from both Q2 2024 and 2025’s opening quarter, execs indicated.

All told, Tencent Music identified $344 million in Q2 2025 net profit. During today’s trading, the company’s stock (NYSE: TME) turned in roughly 12% growth to finish at $25.39 per share.