Alibaba Group announced on Wednesday that it has established a new music group with musician Gao Xiaosong as chairman and Song Ke as CEO.

According to the statement, Alibaba Group said one of the future strategic development directions for the company is culture and entertainment. It will focus on providing more spiritual and cultural services and products for consumers.

The company previously formed Alibaba Pictures Group to produce films in late 2014 after buying a majority stake in the former ChinaVision Media and integrating it into a company with new name. Now the music group is another strategic step for Alibaba in the cultural industry.

Alibaba Group has acquired Xiami, a major music-streaming service, and TTPod.com, another music-streaming site with a self-developed major digital music player. The group said the new music group will integrate with all of other Alibaba's music businesses to give users better products and services. Xiami and TTPod.com work closely with many record labels, stream more than 10 million licensed songs to users and provide a display platform for new original musicians.

The company invited two predominant figures to head the new music group: Gao Xiaosong, a famous singer, songwriter, talk show host, film director and Internet celebrity, will take the post of chairman of the board, while Song Ke, a long time music executive, will be chief executive officer. "The two have a very high status in China's music and cultural worlds and are loved by many users. We hope the two will explore the Big Data and networks established by Alibaba and their own experiences in musical and cultural domains to bring more chemical reaction to the industry," the company said.

Gao Xiaosong, the new chairman, later said on his official Sina Weibo microblogging account, "It was 20 years since I launched the Rye Music label with Song Ke. Alibaba Music Group will be the last stop for us as music executives. Thanks to Alibaba's trust, the Alibaba Music Group will become a world-class music entity."

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