Under pressure from China, Jack Ma's Alibaba Group to shut down its music streaming app
his file photo taken on October 30, 2020, shows the logo of the Alibaba Group outside the offices of the Ant Group, the financial arm of the Chinese e-commerce giant, in Hong Kong.
Chinese billionaire Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group, which is currently under scrutiny by the Chinese government for alleged monopoly practices is set to shut its music streaming service in a bid to scale down its businesses.
The streaming platform is called Xiami Music, and will cease operations next month. "Due to operational adjustments, we will stop the service of Xiami Music from February 5," the platform announced on Tuesday on its Weibo account.
The application was acquired by Alibaba in 2013, and has since seen investment worth millions. But the app currently controls only 2 per cent of the country’s music streaming market. It stands behind apps like KuGou Music, QQ Music, KuWo, and NeatEase Cloud Music, based on data from Talking Data, a data intelligence company from Beijing.
Also read:How Chinese President Xi Jinping scuttled Jack Ma's Ant group IPO
In December 2020, Ant Group was planning to turn its financial operations into a folding company - allowing it to operate and be regulated more like a bank, as reported by Bloomberg.
Chinese regulators had threatened to interfere in the financial functioning of the company in relation to monopoly practices. China’s responsecould considerably stop the growth of Ant Group’s profitable units.
Also read:Chinese regulators probe Ant Group's equity investments, sources say
The country’s central bank - People’s Bank in December told Ant executives to improve their business module, and to comply with the country’s regulations.
In the central bank’s statement, Ant Group is depicted as lacking a governance mechanism, while adding that the fintech company is defying regulatory compliance requirements.
Amid reports of Jack Ma going ''missing'', a CNBC report on Tuesday claimed that the business magnate Jack Ma is not missing but is “laying low” at present after telling off Chinese government regulators.
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Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s absence from public view in the past two months, including missing the final episode of a TV show on which he was to appear as a judge, has fueled social media speculation over his whereabouts amid a Chinese regulatory clampdown on his sprawling business empire.