TENCENT COULD BE HIT WITH $1.5BN FINE AND FORCED TO SELL TWO MUSIC APPS IN CHINA (REPORT)
Tencent and its majority-owned subsidiary, Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), are facing a potential battering in China as part of an antitrust clampdown by the nation’s regulators. Tencent was investigated a couple of years ago by anti-competitive watchdogs in China for striking exclusive licensing agreements with the three major record companies in the territory. Tencent Music’s previous deals with Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music, enabled TME – the owner of China’s largest music streaming services – to license the majors’ music for its own platforms, but also to exclusively sub-license these catalogs to local rivals. However, the anti-competition investigation into Tencent was paused after the firm agreed to strike differently-structured music deals. In TME’s latest licensing agreements with Universal and Warner, each announced in the past eight months, Tencent no longer possesses an exclusive sub-licensing right, allowing these companies to also strike separate di...