Amazon and Facebook grabbed headlines with groundbreaking moves last week: segueing into, respectively, bank accounts and music. Groundbreaking, that is, for the West — such moves are business as normal in China.
Alibaba, which like Amazon has its roots in ecommerce, bolted on finance with the launch of Alipay in 2004.
Tencent, China’s biggest tech group, began building its music empire a few years ago. Like Facebook, it signed distribution deals with international record labels but also bought a group of streaming sites. Tencent Music Entertainment, now earmarked for a spin-off, was valued at $12.3bn by last year’s share swap with global peer Spotify.