TikTok is launching a new “social music streaming service” in Indonesia and Brazil, the company announced Thursday (July 6).
TikTok Music is a premium-only service that users will be able to synch with their existing TikTok accounts in order to listen to, share and download the tracks they discover on TikTok. The service is available starting now in both countries; all new TikTok Music users will be offered a one-month free trial.
TikTok Music will launch with a “full catalogue of music from thousands of labels and artists,” according to a press release. That includes Sony Music, whose catalog hasn’t been available on TikTok’s existing streaming service, Resso, since September. The release adds that Sony’s catalog will become available on Resso again beginning Thursday.
Following Thursday’s launch, Resso — which launched in March 2020 in India and Indonesia before later being made available in Brazil — will cease operating in both Indonesia and Brazil on Sept. 5. Existing Resso users will be invited to transfer their accounts to TikTok Music “with the click of a button,” the release states.
TikTok’s pivot to a subscription-based streamer began in May, when its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, announced that Resso would become a premium-only service.
Among other features, TikTok Music subscribers will have the ability to swipe up and down on the app to explore personalized music recommendations; connect with “like-minded” music fans; sing along to real-time lyrics; co-create collaborative playlists with friends; import their music libraries from external playlists; and search for lyrics to discover songs, according to the press release. The service will include uninterrupted ad-free listening and a download function allowing users to listen to music offline.
“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. TikTok Music will make it easy for people in Indonesia and Brazil to save, download and share their favourite viral tracks from TikTok,” said Ole Obermann, global head of music business development at TikTok, in a statement. “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.”
For more than a year, ByteDance has been signaling its intention to launch a music streaming service that would compete with Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube. In spring 2022, the company registered the handles @TikTokMusic on both Twitter and Instagram; that May, it also filed a trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a service under the same name. In October, Billboard confirmed that ByteDance was in conversations with all major music rights holders to launch its music streaming service in additional countries in Latin America, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
The launch of TikTok Music is a potential game-changer for the music industry, as rights holders have pressured the company to embrace a subscription model over an ad-supported one. Streaming subscriptions are a primary driver of music industry revenue, with paid subscription streaming revenue surpassing $10 billion in the United States for the first time last year, according to the RIAA. It accounts for 77% of all streaming revenue and nearly two-thirds of total revenue.
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