The day has finally arrived. Following months of speculation and analysis about TikTok’s plans to launch a standalone music streaming service, today (July 6), ‘TikTok Music‘, a streaming app and serious new
According to pulled from Described as a “social music streaming service,” TikTok says that its new music app “will harness the power of music discovery on TikTok”. TikTok Music says that it offers users a “full catalog of music from thousands of labels and artists, uninterrupted ad-free listening and a download function for listening offline”. And, as a premium-only subscription music service, TikTok Music says that it aims to offer “a high-quality listening experience while increasing opportunities and revenue for artists and rightsholders”. A key feature of the app is that it will let its users stream full versions of viral TikTok songs on TikTok Music. Interestingly, TikTok inked a trial deal with The costs for the new app are as follows: News of ByteDance’s TikTok Music launch and sunsetting of the Resso app in Brazil and Indonesia comes two months after the latter app shut down its free tier. In TikTok’s own words in the press statement announcing the launch of TikTok Music, the flagship video app “is already famous for breaking artists, creating hits, and powering music discovery”. The announcement adds: “With the launch of TikTok Music, users will now be able to go one step further, to listen, share and download the music they have discovered on TikTok, as well as share their favourite tracks and artists with their TikTok community”. “We are pleased to introduce TikTok Music, a new kind of service that combines the power of music discovery on TikTok with a best-in-class streaming service.” Ole Obermann, TikTok “We are pleased to introduce TikTok Music, a new kind of service that combines the power of music discovery on TikTok with a best-in-class streaming service,” said Ole Obermann, Global Head of Music Business Development, TikTok. Obermann added: “TikTok Music will make it easy for people in Indonesia and Brazil to save, download and share their favourite viral tracks from TikTok. “We are excited about the opportunities TikTok Music presents for both music fans and artists, and the great potential it has for driving significant value to the music industry.” If we take a closer look at the markets where TikTok is launching its new music streaming app, we can identify a couple of possible reasons why they were picked. The first is TikTok’s vast existing reach in both markets. According to Datareportal, Brazil is estimated to be TikTok’s third largest market with over 84 million users there (based on the advertising audience reach numbers published in TikTok’s self-service tools in April 2023). Indonesia, meanwhile, according to Datareportal is TikTok’s second-largest market with an estimated 113 million active TikTok users aged 18 and above. Plus, both have markets have already been tested with Resso. Brazil’s recorded music market grew 15.4% last year, according to the according to SPOT, was led by Europe and Latin America. If TikTok can convert a portion of its estimated 84m+ users of its flagship video app to become trialists, and beyond that, subscribers, of its new Music app, Spotify could have a serious market share problem on its hands in Latin America. The same goes for Indonesia and South East Asia. Spotify has previously noted, citing eMarketer data, that South East Asia is the second-fastest-growing region globally in terms of internet users. In October SPOT also highlighted SEA as a region of focus for its advertising business. The launch of the new app marks the second music-related app launch from TikTok’s parent ByteDance in as many weeks. On Friday (June 30), ByteDance launched a beta version in the US of a free-to-use music production app, called Ripple, which has two key features: a ‘Melody to Song’ generator and a virtual recording studio. According to Bytedance, the AI model was trained on music which is licensed to or owned by Bytedance. The company told MBW that it was not trained on major record company music. MBW understands that Bytedance also used music produced in-house to train the model.Music Business Worldwide
