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Oct. 15 (NBD) – China's leading internet company NetEase launched an electronic music brand Fever in Shanghai last Friday.

The brand, independent from the company's popular streaming service NetEase Cloud Music, is an integrated electronic music service platform. Its main businesses include live events, music production and DJ training, crossover cooperation of brands, etc. 

Fever is strongly backed by Ding Lei, CEO of NetEase, who is an ardent fan of the emerging music genre and even learnt how to DJ recently, according to the brand's CEO Jessie Wang. 

Electronic music is gaining a wider audience in China. According to the 2016-2017 China Electronic Music Market Research Report released by iiMedia Research, there were 197 million electronic music listeners in 2016, and the number is expected to reach 358 million in 2018 and exceed 400 million in 2019. 

This echoes a broader trend in China's entertainment industry in recent years, as niche cultures of various kinds are now entering the mass market. "Electronic music is an important part. It's very fashionable, and suits the need of more capable consumers," Yin Shi, an analyst of the music industry from big-data consultancy firm Analysys, told NBD.

NetEase is not the only tech giant who sees opportunities in this domain. This January in Hong Kong, Tencent Music and Sony Music Entertainment announced an international electronic music label named Liquid State, which will be run by the companies' joint venture.

However, fostering a niche market takes time, especially for a type of music that started so late in China. "Luckily we have consumers from different social strata and with rising income and consuming ability. The urgent job now is to produce popular songs while maintaining the characteristics of electronic music," Yin Shi said.

With the offering of exclusively licensed contents, the fierce competition among China's music streaming service providers has temporarily come to an end. 

According to a report published by BigData-Research, Tencent's QQ Music took a lion's share of 66.3 percent of the online music market in 2017, while NetEase Cloud Music, though ranking the second, only occupied 14.2 percent. 

Niche markets such as electronic music are seen as NetEase's new battlefield to challenge Tencent's dominance.

Moreover, NetEase Cloud Music last Friday completed a new round of financing, securing investments from China's search engine giant Baidu and other companies including General Atlantic. With Baidu's content distribution strength and AI technology, NetEase will stand a better chance in the competition with Tencent in the music market. 

Email: limenglin@nbd.com.cn