QQ Music, a music app owned by Tencent with over over 700 million users, has recently added a “Music Zone” function to its internal testing version. “Music Zone” gives users a virtual space to decorate and hang virtual music players on the virtual walls.Users can change their appearances by choosing from paid avatars offered by the platform, in the form of NFTs. With Music Zone’s community map, users can also visit others’ virtual spaces, listen to music in their players and leave reviews.“Music Zone” is Tencent’s new attempt in building an interest-based virtual social platform, which echos the visions of Liang Zhu, CEO of Tencent Entertainment, who mentioned the possibility of exploring metaverse applications inside QQ Music.Tencent has been exploring ways to interact with the virtual world and find crossovers with its existing businesses. Previously, Tencent has help released digital collectibles of many popular artists in China, including singer Hu Yanbin, Zhang Chu and Zhang Gasong.In addition, Tencent hosted TMELAND, a virtual music carnival with millions of participants, on December 31 last year. International musicians such as Anti-General, Luminn, DEXTERKING, Vicetone, and 072C Lab were invited to perform at the carnival. More metaverse-orientated moves are expected to come from Tencent, as the company has recently set up a XR(extended reality) unit, and plans to hire more than 300 staff. According to Tencent’s Senior Vice President Steven Ma, the company will actively seek opportunities in development in software, content, systems, SDK tools, hardware to create virtual reality experiences in the next 4-5 years.