Back in May 2022, TikTok parent company ByteDance went over to the US patent and trademark office to file a trademark for a service named ‘TikTok Music’. Taking a look at the filing, it can easily be concluded that is filed for use in music streaming applications allowing users to purchase and play music.
TikTok being so widely used for short-form video content is already famed for promoting music. Over the span of its operations, the application has been the sole reason behind hundreds of music hits. Reports prove that once a song gets used in TikTok challenges and viral videos, it is bound to get an increased number of views on both YouTube, Spotify, and other music streaming applications around the world.
In a report, TikTok showed that amongst the 175 songs that trended on their application ultimately made their way into the top hundred charts. With such strong influence, TikTok is often times used by music producers, singers, and rappers to market their songs and some even allocate huge budgets for TikTok.
With TikTok having so much to do with music, it is only plausible for them to step inside the music streaming industry and built a service of their own. But the social giant, for now, has no streaming service for the western markets, and applications like Spotify and Apple Music own the majority streaming market there. ByteDance however, has a comparatively smaller music streaming platform named ‘Resso’, which has been operational in three countries including India, Brazil and Indonesia.
Offering a TikTok-like interface, Resso allows its users to skip songs through a simple up and down swiping. The application has recorded massive numbers, with over 42.3 million downloads in 2022 alone. This adds up the total Resso users to somewhere around 184 million, making it have a 19% year-over-year growth.
According to different sources, TikTok is now looking forward to expanding ‘Resso’ under the name of ‘TikTok Music’ into bigger markets such as the UK and Australia. Now, this is something that big music streamers in the US should be worried about since TikTok with its vast social influence and capital can easily grasp a good chunk of the US streaming market.
