US pop band Backstreet Boys evokes Chinese nostalgia with 44 million tuning in for concert on Tencent’s WeChat
- Friday’s concert was WeChat’s latest effort to attract users for Channels through a string of pop concerts that evoke millennial nostalgia
- Tencent is also exploring monetisation opportunities for concerts hosted by Channels, with luxury US carmaker Lincoln promoted during the show
More than 44 million WeChat users tuned in for an online concert by the Backstreet Boys, a US pop band hugely popular in China in the 1990s and 2000s, as Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings ramps up efforts to promote the app’s video function.
The concert, lasting around two hours, was live-streamed on Friday evening on WeChat Channels, the super-app’s video function. Irish boy band Westlife also made an appearance and collaborated with the US group on two songs, taking Chinese social media by storm with a trip down memory lane.
A total of 44.2 million users watched the WeChat concert, sending around 25.5 million “cheers” through the app’s interactive function during the performance, according to Tencent.
The online discussion about the event continued on Saturday, with Backstreet Boys’ 1997 single As Long As You Love Me trending on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo.
Many netizens shared their memories about the tune, with some calling it the first English song they had learned. “I almost cried when the music started; it brought me back to my days of youth,” one user wrote in one of the most liked comments.