The biggest online commerce company in the world, Alibaba, is looking to dip further into the business of entertainment. The announcement was made by the Alibaba Digital Media and Entertainment Group.
According to the South China Morning Post, Tencent, a media Chinese investment holding company, will be looking to partner up with Alibaba and other music labels to distribute music in China. Previously, Tencent distributed their music through their streaming apps — QQ Music, Kuwo, and Kugou. With the partnership with Alibaba, it will be much easier for the people of China to share music with one another through the messaging app WeChat.
At the announcement, Tech Node reported that the main aim of the partnership was for Alibaba to provide a more fun experience for online shoppers. Shopping, which is still Alibaba's bread and butter, was emphasized in the statement of the chairman and CEO of the digital media arm of the company, Yu Yongfu. Yongfu said that "our mission is to allow those who have fun shopping at Alibaba to truly live at Alibaba."
In 2015, Tencent saw to it that WeChat users did not have access to Alibaba-owned music streams, which was from Alibaba's own Xiami platform. However, this caused a predicted rift between the two companies but was lifted later on. It is highly speculated that the biggest driving forces that brought Alibaba and Tencent together are Sony, Universal, and Time Warner. They were able to smooth things out between the two companies to make the deal possible.
Perhaps it was fitting that Alibaba's founder, Jack Ma, performed at the annual anniversary party of the company with a Michael Jackson inspired routine, complete with the artist's style of militarized black and gold laden clothing. This occurred on Sept 8, less than two weeks before the entertainment related announcement. According to Fortune, Ma danced along to Jackson's hits, with other dancers in identical outfits to celebrate the event.
