TikTok is reportedly making a play for consumers’ music streaming spending with a new subscription platform.
The video platform has launched a “TikTok Music” streaming service in Brazil and Indonesia, which enables users to play, download and share tracks, syncing accounts with their existing TikTok profiles, TechCrunch reported this month.
The technology company declined to comment on whether it plans to launch this service in countries such as the United States going forward, but it does seem likely that that would be where this is headed, the report said.
“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 and IP rights at TikTok parent company ByteDance, per Billboard. “TikTok Music will make it easy for people in Indonesia and Brazil to save, download and share their favorite viral tracks from TikTok.”
The streaming service will offer personalized song recommendations, collaborative playlists, liking and commenting capabilities and more, TechCrunch reported. It will replace ByteDance’s existing Resso music platform in the two countries. (Resso also currently operates in India, but there’s no word on ByteDance’s plans there.)
The news comes at a time when, at least in the U.S., consumers are canceling subscriptions, not adding more.
Research from the latest edition of PYMNTS’ Subscription Commerce Readiness study, “The Subscription Commerce Readiness Report: The Loyalty Factor,” created in collaboration with sticky.io, revealed “the lowest recorded number of subscriptions per subscriber since February 2021.” Subscribers averaged only 2.6 subscriptions each, and 57% of consumers had canceled at least one subscription in the past year because of cost.
Still, the global music streaming market is a potentially lucrative one, if TikTok can establish its audience. Spotify, for its part, touts 515 million users (210 million of whom are paid subscribers) around the world. Apple Music does not release up-to-date user figures, but in 2019, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services Eddy Cue stated in an interview that the platform had 60 million subscribers. Amazon Music is estimated by various firms to have a similar-sized user base.
Additionally, TikTok is looking for additional opportunities to drive revenue from its young, highly active user base. The app has been broadening its online retail offerings, beginning to sell products directly through the platform. It is supplementing its TikTok Shop, where merchants sell items and pay a commission to TikTok, with a new “Trendy Beat” feature in the U.K., where it seems TikTok retains the sale.