TikTok has announced that it is closing TikTok Music, its standalone music streaming service, at the end of November. The exact reason is unclear, although the company says its current focus is integrating the main TikTok app with other music services via the Add To Music App feature.
Ole Obermann, Global Head Of Music Business at TikTok, says in a statement, “Our Add to Music App feature has already enabled hundreds of millions of track saves to playlists on partner music streaming services. We will be closing TikTok Music at the end of November in order to focus on our goal of furthering TikTok’s role in driving even greater music listening and value on music streaming services, for the benefit of artists, songwriters and the industry”.
TikTok owner Bytedance originally launched a standalone music streaming service under another brand, Resso, in Indonesia, Brazil and India. That was then replaced by TikTok Music in Indonesia and Brazil in July 2023, which then expanded into Mexico, Singapore and Australia.
According to data provided to CMU by Appfigures.com, a leading mobile analytics and intelligence platform, TikTok Music has been downloaded 7.2 million times since its launch in July 2023. The vast majority of those downloads - 6.5 million - came from Brazil (3.5 million) and Indonesia (3 million). Mexico, Australia and Singapore racked up just 0.68 million downloads between them.
Over the same period, and in the same five countries, the combined downloads of Spotify, Deezer and YouTube Music was 91.4 million.
To put that into perspective, the combined downloads of Spotify in Brazil over the same period was 22.6 million, while the combined downloads of Spotify, Deezer and YouTube Music together was over 33 million, meaning that TikTok Music’s 3.5 million downloads equated to a fairly respectable 9.6% share of combined downloads from the four services.
However, a significant number of those 7.2 million downloads took place in the first few weeks that the app was available, suggesting an initial flurry of interest which may not have converted into sustained use or listening.
Taking a snapshot of the period 1 Sep 2023 to 31 Aug 2024 - removing the first few weeks the app was launched - TikTok Music was downloaded 4.8 million times, while Spotify, Deezer and YouTube Music were downloaded 70 million times, giving TikTok Music around a 6.4% share of downloads. By August 2024, TikTok Music was downloaded just 136,549 times, vs a combined 5.4 million downloads of the other three music apps, equating to just a 2.5% share.
The licensing, marketing and financial challenges of launching a multi-territory music streaming service are well known, but it was thought that TikTok Music had a better chance than most in becoming another significant global player in the market. TikTok was already navigating the tricky world of music licensing, could market the service to its existing massive user-base and, if necessary, could access the deep cash reserves of its parent company.
However, given the economics of streaming, where up to 70% of revenue goes to the music industry, it was never entirely clear what Bytedance’s ambitions were. The relatively low download rates beyond the hype around launch, when compared to the rest of the market, suggest the company perhaps didn’t get as fully behind its music service as it could have done.
When YouTube was enemy number one of the music industry, it partly used the launch of the standalone YouTube Music subscription service to improve its relationships with the record companies and music publishers. It’s possible TikTok thought it could also use its music service to placate angry labels and publishers.
Though it didn’t stop the big falling out with Universal Music earlier this year, and at various points both Resso and TikTok Music’s catalogue was reduced because of licensing issues.
In terms of placating the labels, directing TikTok users towards Spotify and Amazon Music whenever tracks go viral on the short video platform possibly works just as well as TikTok having its own music service, and that’s a lot easier to manage.
That app, which allows users to save a track they discover on TikTok to their personal libraries on services like Spotify and Amazon Music, was launched in the UK and US last December and then rolled out into various other markets in January.
