NetEase’s music-streaming service goes down for 2 hours after ‘infrastructure failures’

NetEase Cloud Music, a subsidiary of China’s second-largest video gaming company, started offering error messages in place of tunes on Monday afternoon

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NetEase Cloud Music, owned by China’s second-largest video gaming company, faced unspecified “infrastructure failures” on Monday that led to a two-hour outage. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 7:18pm, 19 Aug 2024

NetEase Cloud Music, the Hong Kong-listed Chinese music-streaming service with more than 200 million monthly active users, reported a widespread outage for over two hours on Monday afternoon, blaming infrastructure issues.

Starting from 3pm, users said online that while the mobile and web apps could be opened, they were unable to play music. Instead they received messages saying “data error” or “failed to retrieve play information”. The web version displayed a “502 bad gateway” error.

NetEase Cloud Music said in a statement on its official Weibo account that the outage was caused by “infrastructure failures”. The outage was fully restored by 6pm, according to the company. As compensation, NetEase said it is offering users a free seven-day membership that they can claim on August 20.

NetEase did not immediately respond to an emailed inquiry from the South China Morning Post regarding the specific cause of the outage.

NetEase Cloud Music, a subsidiary of China’s second-largest video gaming company, was listed independently on the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2021. According to its earnings, the platform had 206 million monthly active users as of December 2023, with 44.12 million of them paying subscribers. The average revenue per paying user stood at 6.9 yuan (US$1) per month.

The company achieved its first full-year profit last year, when annual net income reached 734 million yuan on 7.9 billion yuan in net revenue. NetEase Cloud Music is set to report its earnings for the first half of 2024 on Thursday.