Mathew has been one of the pioneers in the development of the music licensing market in China for the past 13 years, having started the distribution company, R2G with his partners. After the acquisition of R2G by Tencent Music in 2016, Mathew moved to NetEase Cloud Music (NCM) to head up their International Music division.

He has long been a friend to the independent music community and in addition to launching the first legal independent music store in China 10 years ago, he has paved the way for many international artists to legally distribute their music in China, including then-unknown artist Adele.

NCM, which started only in 2013, has been the fastest growing music service in China adding 200 million users in the past 12 months to record 600 million registered users. With more than 50% of music listened to on NCM being non-Chinese music, this represents the largest share of consumption of international music amongst all music services in China.

As Technode describes it, “NetEase Cloud Music is considered the cool kid in the music streaming market with its smart music recommendation and partnership with indie musicians.”