It's Official: Xiami Music Calls It Quits

Users of Alibaba’s popular music streaming app Xiami got unpleasant news this morning: the service is going to be shut down next month.

Xiami posted to Weibo this morning saying the music streaming service will end on Feb 5, 2021, the end of a 12-year run.

On Jan 5, it will stop new account registration, VIP recharge, and album purchase services; On Feb 5, functions like music playing, downloading and comments will be disabled; On Mar 5, the servers will be shut down. VIP users can apply for a refund before Mar 5, while all users can download the album and music they bought to a local PC as well as export the history playlists.

Netizens lamented the demise of the service, many claiming this was commented under the post: “the end of an era.”

Founded in 2008 by Wang Hao, an Alibaba engineer and guitar player himself, Xiami.com was initially known as Emumo—short for “earn music and money.” In the beginning, it was a user-generated-content (UGC) platform, where everyone could upload clips and add information to music and musicians. To some extent, Xiami was built upon the effort of these devotees and its niche taste also nurtured a lot of independent musicians.

In 2013, Alibaba acquired Xiami and make it a part of its Digital Media and Entertainment Group branch business. It is reported that Xiami at that time already had 20 million users.

However, fierce competition and content copyright became the Waterloo of Xiami. In 2015, the National Copyright Administration forbade music platforms from uploading unauthorized content, which knocked the wind out of Xiami's sales. In the meantime, Tencent’s QQ Music started to shift their focus to releasing (and paying for) copyrighted music. By 2016, QQ Music had amassed a giant music library with more than 15 million pieces of music, while Xiami's dwindled to 4 million.

A distinct marketing strategy was also a fatal problem for Xiami. Compared to one of its competitors, NetEase Cloud Music, which launches promotion activities every now and then, Xiami has been extremely quiet and low profile. You can seldom see its commercials or shared posts on social media. By 2019, the market share of Xiami had dwindled to less than 2 percent.

Alibaba, however, didn’t put all its eggs in one basket. In September of 2019, it bought a minority stake in Netease Cloud Music, a USD 700 million co-investment alongside Jack Ma’s Yunfeng Capital, which put Xiami in an even tighter spot.

Suffering from frequent strategy adjustments, management reshuffles, and a lack of content rights, Xiami was gradually losing ground. There is some talk that Xiami may shift its focus to B-to-B business eventually, but its heyday as a consumer music plaform is now over.

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Image: 36ke