ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, filed for a new service “TikTok Music” trademark application in the United States. As a standalone app, the new music streaming service could enable users to play, share, download, and purchase music.
TikTok is already a very very popular video-sharing app. Its unique mobile-only video creating, editing, and sharing format has forced Instagram to redesign its app in order to compete with TikTok’s growing popularity.
Despite facing political pressures under former U.S President Donald Trump’s administration, the app reached 3 billion downloads worldwide on iOS and Android in July 2021 which made it the first non-Facebook app to reach the 3 billion milestone since 2014.
New “TikTok Music” could give users a more personalized music streaming experience than Spotify and Apple Music
According to Insider, in November 2021, the Chinese social media company first filed for the new “TikTok Music” trademark in Australia, and in May this year, it filed the same trademark application with the US Patent and Trademark Office.
The filing describes the phrase “TikTok Music” to cover a range of goods and services including a mobile app used to “purchase, play, share, download music, songs and albums, lyrics” and more. Furthermore, it will also deliver a more personalized users experience like live streaming audio and video, editing and uploading favorite photographs as the cover of playlists, and commenting on music, songs, and albums.
The Chinese social media company is not new to music streaming services; it already runs a separate music streaming service outside the TikTok branding called “Resso” in Brazil, India, and Indonesia. (*It is currently banned in India due to political reasons.)
With TikTok’s huge user base, the new “TikTok Music” service is likely to give Spotify and Apple Music strong competition in the music streaming industry. The report states:
It’s easy to see a scenario in which the company could try to convert its existing TikTok user base into paying music subscribers.
ByteDance followed that exact strategy to grow Resso in Brazil adding a button for TikTok users to clink into the Resso app when they stumbled upon a song they wanted to hear in full.
The company had plans to use TikTok as a marketing tool for Resso in India before the app was banned in June 2020 as part of a geopolitical dispute between India and China.
