Alibaba Reportedly Acquired Mobile Music Player TTPOD, Betting on Mobile Music Sector to Take on WeChat

Screenshot of TTPOD

Alibaba reportedly pushed through the acquisition for a second mobile music company TTPOD after acquiring music service Xiami in April this year (report in Chinese).

Founded in May 2008, TTPOD has received millions of dollars of Series A in 2011 and secured strategic investment from Alibaba in October 2012. TTPOD registered north of 200 million users by this June, according to data from Xiami.

Alibaba has made strenuous efforts to explore mobile music sector. The ecommerce giant once rolled out music service in Taohua.com, the digital channel of Taobao, but the service did not develop as expected due to copyright issues. Then, Alibaba acquired Xiami and established an independent music unit.

Entertainment attribute is what Alibaba’s product lacks as compared with product backed by Tencent. This weakness becomes more obvious with the transition from PC to mobile networking era, said an industry insider. According to data from Tencent, more than 350 million users log in QQ Music per month.

The acquisition of TTPOD will boost the development of Alibaba’s IM tool Laiwang, because music service is a much effective means to attract users in its campaign against the reigning WeChat.

The business of Xiami and TTPOD are complementary, because Xiami is focused on high-tier and mature users, while TTPOD has a wider coverage on all tiers of users, most of whom are young people, said Zhang Yi, CEO of iResearch.