TikTok, Tyler Le/Insider
- TikTok is expanding its music-streaming app on July 19 into three new markets.
- A small set of users in Australia, Mexico, and Singapore will soon be able to try TikTok Music.
- TikTok's influence over music discovery makes it a hefty competitor for Spotify and Apple Music.
Earlier this month, TikTok announced it was rolling out a music-streaming app in Brazil and Indonesia. Starting tomorrow, it's expanding the product, TikTok Music, for a limited set of users in Australia, Mexico, and Singapore, a spokesperson told Insider.
Users who are approved to join its closed beta in the new markets will receive a three-month free trial for the service.
If TikTok Music eventually makes its way into other countries such as the US, where it filed a trademark application in May 2022, it would immediately become a weighty rival for streamers like Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal.
The TikTok spokesperson also said the company will have "more news to share on the launch of TikTok Music in the coming months."
TikTok's video app is enormously influential in music discovery and artist promotions. Record labels, music marketers, and artists spend thousands of dollars to hire TikTok influencers to include tracks in videos. Some even create custom augmented-reality effects or enlist remix artists to build hype for songs on the app.
"It's the most important thing that's happened in the music industry in a long time," Jonny Kaps, cofounder and CEO of the independent label +1 Records, told Insider in May. "It just allows us to build a new artist audience in a way that we've never really been able to do before."
With TikTok Music, the company can connect the dots between music discovery and audio streaming. TikTok Music users can sync their accounts directly to TikTok, making it easy to hear a song snippet and then click over to stream the full track.
Its competitors are certainly taking notice. Spotify added its own TikTok-like short-video feed in March. Its CEO Daniel Ek described TikTok as a "formidable competitor" during the company's January earnings call.
TikTok's push into audio streaming isn't exactly a surprise. The company first filed an Australian trademark application for "TikTok Music" in November 2021, Insider reported. Its parent company ByteDance has also been testing a music-streaming app called Resso in India, Brazil, and Indonesia since 2020. TikTok Music is set to eventually replace Resso in the latter two markets.
Outside streaming, TikTok has been experimenting with other ways to make money from its influence over music. Last year it launched an artist distribution and marketing product called SoundOn, even testing signing artists directly. The company also recently rolled out its own version of the Billboard 100 or Spotify Viral 50 music charts for a subset of users.