Chinese Internet giant Tencent signed an investment agreement with South Korea's top entertainment company YG Entertainment and Chinese ticket service provider Weiying Technology in Seoul on Tuesday, according to a press release sent to the Global Times.
According to the agreement, Tencent and Weiying will respectively invest $30 million and $55 million into YG Entertainment in exchange for a 4.5 percent and 8.2 percent stake in the company. The investment will make Weiying and Tencent YG Entertainment's third and fourth largest shareholders respectively after L Capital Asia, a subsidiary of luxury goods group LVMH.
YG Entertainment manages leading artists such as "Gangnam Style" rapper Psy, 1TYM and BIGBANG.
This move demonstrates the Chinese Internet giant's ambitions to firmly entrench K-pop culture in China. Earlier, at the end of 2014, Tencent's music service, QQ Music, reached an exclusive agreement with YG Entertainment for music copyrights in the mainland.
One of the biggest streaming music platforms in China, QQ Music has acquired millions of songs from music studios such as Sony Music, Warner Music and Universal Music.
Statistics from Tencent show that over the past two years YG Entertainment's market share in China has increased by 500 percent.
