【NetEase】 A Chinese Music Streaming + Chinese Social Media Platform?

5 min readJun 16, 2017

NetEase Music is such a “social platform” with excellent UGC (User Generated Content), that more than 300 million of the huge user base gather here to interact, exchange with music. It can be roughly compared to Spotify & Deezer.

User Generated Content is defined as any type of content that has been created and put out there by unpaid contributors or, using a better term, fans.

Let’s explore this new social territory together with Phoceis.

Why NetEase Music is a “potential” social platform?

1. Most followers growth among Chinese music platforms

NetEase music is a free music-streaming service with a huge songs catalogue that can even be locally downloaded.

It is very easy to operate on mobile phone or computer.

From the search bar in the upper part of the screen you can find artists, albums, and particular songs. If you want to have an aimless poke around you can look over the different countries and media rankings, including iTunes’ top international lists or the most-played songs in the UK, without leaving the app.

In April 2013，NetEase officially is launched:

In April 2017, NetEase music users exceeded 300 million.

Moreover, the NetEase users are always willing to pay money on platform. In 2016, the number of paid members of the platform has increased by 900% (NetEase 2016 Q4 earnings).

2. UGC is a main part of NetEase music.

Songs, music critics, personalized recommendations, friends and other dynamic product innovation settings make the users love to listen the music with chatting, and the platform become an interactive community. The users of NetEase music like to call themselves “villagers”.

Almost every user has been used to listen to music, while watching the comments, write reviews and then share to other social media platforms. A lot of high quality UGC songs and music critics is shown on NetEase music. By 2016, the villagers had accumulated more than 400 million comments.

3. Grasp lots of Chinese independent original musicians

NetEase music staff used to spend a month to travel all over the Live scene in BeiJing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Lijiang, explore and cooperate with those niche musicians. For example, the musicians can release albums on NetEase music, or operate tour concert with NetEase music’s name.

User Profile

1. Between 15–35, living in first-tier or second-tier cities, have a strong desire to learn and enhance the ability to appreciate music. High buying power, willing to pay for the quality of products.

2. They are fond of finding excellent music. Also like to leave comments, forward the song, participate in the same interest in the music group through a song or a kind of songs.

3. Their spiritual world is rich, far more than the pursuit of material aspects. The real world may not be satisfying, so they need a network world to talk, to look for their identity. NetEase is more than a music platform, the users can be immersed and expressed themselves on it.

How to interact with Villagers?

Song list

It can be organized by style, scene, language and other categories.

Each user can create their own song list, and share it within the platform. They can also share it to other social accounts (WeChat or Weibo), providing the possibility of traffic import, building personal image.

Celebrities interviews

NetEase music has its own exclusive homemade columns, including “music after the scene”, “super face-to-face”, “NetEase Star guest room” and so on, mostly the contents are the story of albums shared by the artists to attract fans.

Comments

Users can comment on songs, radio programs, columns, videos and all other contents.

On the computer side, the comments are in the song player interface below, and the user can listen to the songs while watching the comments. On mobile, the number of comments are shown in the playback interface, and the user will be able to watch the song’s comments.

Some of the users are not listening to songs, but go on NetEase to read the comments, in order to seek spiritual comfort.

Dynamic

Just like the WeChat moments, the user can log in the platform and share his favorite music at the same time, can add pictures (including gif up to four), add text, and can also @ someone.