TikTok is testing an in-app chatbot called Tako that can answer questions about videos and recommend other content. The post TikTok explores conversational AI with tests of Tako chatbot appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Lana Del Rey’s new single isn’t actually a new song. ‘Say Yes To Heaven’ was originally recorded in 2013 but never came out. The post Sped-up TikTok surge sparks release of long-lost Lana Del Rey track appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok is hitting back with a lawsuit to overturn a planned ban of its app by the US state of Montana, due to start in January 2024. The post TikTok challenges the US state of Montana over ban of its app appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok is testing a new feature that integrates its app directly with music streaming services, starting with Apple Music. The post Exclusive: TikTok tests direct streaming links with Apple Music appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Labels have sued brands who use their music in their content on TikTok and other social networks without a proper sync licence. The post TikTok wants more artists to join its Commercial Music Library appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok’s curatorial efforts around music have been stepping up a notch in the last year, the latest example being its #Rock hub. The post TikTok’s latest genre hub is devoted to all things #Rock appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

A headline claiming ‘TikTok Tests Exclusive Deals With Music Artists, Edging Into Labels’ Turf’ is calculated to make waves in the music biz. The post TikTok is quietly stepping up its SoundOn distribution deals appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok’s latest music feature is a new hub within its app focusing on frontline releases. It’s called #NewMusic. The post TikTok launches #NewMusic hub focused on new music releases appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok’s latest music feature is a very early test at this stage, but an interesting one. It’s called ‘Work with Artists’. The post TikTok tests new feature to connect TikTokers with music artists appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The post Behind The Single: How to connect an emotional track with global audiences appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok’s sister app, music-streaming service Resso, is removing its free tier and becoming a premium-only subscription service. The post ByteDance shuts down the free tier of its Resso music streaming service appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Users are turning to external apps to make slicker, or more complex videos, using advanced editing features.  The post Video editing app Capcut powers extra-viral TikTok videos appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The post Behind the Single: PinkPantheress, Ice Spice – ‘Boy’s a liar Pt. 2’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok is in privacy trouble again: it has been fined £12.7m by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office for misusing children’s data. The post TikTok fined £12.7m in the UK for misusing children’s data appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok is launching an initiative called #BehindTheSong, which is designed to celebrate songwriters and producers. The post TikTok unveils its songwriting-focused #BehindTheSong campaign appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Reports claim that TikTok’s parent company ByteDance made more than $80bn of revenues in 2022 – up 30% year-on-year. The post Reports: TikTok was 12% of ByteDance’s $80bn revenues in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Ed Sheeran’s ‘Eyes Closed’ single has now been used in more than 1m video creations on TikTok, the company has announced. The post TikTok hails 1m creations milestone for Ed Sheeran’s ‘Eyes Closed’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok has been chosen as the official entertainment partner for Eurovision 2023 – its second year in that role. The post TikTok re-ups its partnership with the Eurovision Song Contest appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Did TikTok CEO’s appearance before a congressional hearing yesterday make a US ban more or less likely? Probably neither. The post Will TikTok CEO’s congressional testimony stave off a US ban? appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Today’s the day for TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s appearance at a US congressional hearing. Ahead of that, the Washington Post published a poll. The post Washington Post poll finds 41% of Americans support a TikTok ban appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Ahead of TikTok CEO Shout Zi Chew’s appearance at a US congressional hearing tomorrow, his written testimony has been published. The post TikTok CEO’s promise: ‘ByteDance is not an agent of China’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

This Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will be appearing before a congressional committee in the US for a grilling. The post TikTok says it now has 150m monthly active users in the US appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok has received a lot of criticism over the last year for the kind of content that its younger users can be exposed to by its algorithm. The post TikTok is adding a new feed dedicated to science and technology appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

US music industry body the RIAA announced its 2022 figures yesterday, quickly followed up by a guest post by CEO Mitch Glazier for Variety. The post RIAA boss slams TikTok and the ‘empty knock offs’ of AI music appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

We’ve written a lot about TikTok’s troubles with politicians and potential bans in recent weeks, as well as its rightsholder tensions. The post TikTok’s music clout continues with Ed Sheeran and Mae Muller appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok is under intense scrutiny in the US and Europe alike over data security. Project Clover is its latest response. The post TikTok’s ‘Project Clover’ targets data-security fears in Europe appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

We’re going to need some kind of wall-chart to keep track of the growing number of US legislative bills that could lead to a ban on TikTok. The post RESTRICT Act is the latest US bill threatening a TikTok ban appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Another challenge for TikTok in its policy battles in the west is that they may overshadow its product announcements. The post TikTok makes a longer-form, premium move with ‘Series’ feature appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Another day, another reason for TikTok’s policy and public relations teams to open their inboxes and grimace. The post Charities want TikTok to do more to protect children’s wellbeing appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok has announced its latest new features focusing on the wellbeing and safety of its younger users, including a big move. The post TikTok adds teen time-management features as US pressure ramps up appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Decentralised streaming service Audius has a new way for artists to sign up and get verified on its platform: by using their TikTok profiles. The post Audius expands its TikTok integration with new signup feature appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok’s SoundOn distribution arm is enjoying a busy start to 2023. Now it has switched distribution partners to FUGA. The post TikTok swaps TuneCore for FUGA as SoundOn distribution partner appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Last week we reported on TikTok’s announcement that it now has 150 million monthly active users (MAUs) in Europe. The post YouTube, Meta, Twitter and Spotify (sort of) reveal their EU user figures appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok’s latest music-focused campaign is happening in the UK, and it’s based around homegrown hip-hop artists. The post TikTok debuts Next Gen rap program and hits new Euro milestone appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok limiting users from using certain commercial tracks in its app in Australia as a ‘test’ was guaranteed to go down badly with labels. The post Australian music body ARIA criticises TikTok over music test appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Snoop Dogg’s first act after acquiring Death Row Records was to whip its catalogue off streaming services. Now he’s putting it back on. The post TikTok gets a week’s jump on Death Row Records’ streaming return appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Rightsholders may be energetically seeking a slice of TikTok’s advertising revenue in its next set of music licensing deals. The post Report: TikTok is working on a new paywalled posts feature appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

If you need another nudge on music streaming’s boom times facing their biggest challenge yet, yesterday’s WMG financials may provide it. The post WMG revenues fall but new CEO says ‘music is still undervalued’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

US president Joe Biden gave his annual State Of The Union address last night, including a couple of legislative priorities relevant to music. The post Biden talks crackdown on ticketing fees and kids’ data collection appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok is rolling out its SoundOn distribution arm in another country, and… let’s just say the timing is interesting. The post TikTok launches its SoundOn distribution program in Australia appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The latest skirmish in TikTok’s ongoing licensing negotiations with music rightsholders appears to be taking place in Australia. The post TikTok is testing limits on using songs in its app in Australia appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok has been facing increasing pressure in the US over issues including privacy and children’s safety. Its CEO will appear at a hearing. The post TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew to appear before US House in March appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Sometimes when videos go viral on TikTok, it’s not an entirely organic phenomenon. Forbes has offered some evidence for this. The post Sometimes ‘heating’ is the reason videos go viral on TikTok appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

In the last two years TikTok has been the launchpad for a new wave of playlisters, among them Ari Elkins. The post TikTok tastemaker Ari Elkins is launching a label with Avex appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Operating in the streaming environment in 2023 is a case of balancing promotional demands from streaming and social media services. The post You Me At Six get some promotional welly from Amazon and TikTok appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

2023 is shaping up to be a fascinating year for TikTok, for reasons both positive and negative. And 2022 was eventful enough… The post TikTok music boss talks short video, long-form listening and licensing appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Last year we reported on the enormous claimed audience for a Backstreet Boys concert that was livestreamed on WeChat: 44.2 million viewers. The post Tencent targets TikTok with WeChat Channels short-video feature appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok is heavily involved again, hosting the public vote aspect of the awards for the second year. The post TikTok to host public votes for the 2023 Brit Awards appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Data·ai (formerly App Annie) analyses the mobile apps market and makes revenue predictions. Its latest annual report has plenty of juice. The post App store spending fell by 2% in 2022 (but it was still $167bn) appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

While TikTok continues to butt heads with major label licensing teams behind closed doors, there is at least one new agreement to report. The post TikTok signs a licensing deal with MENA-based Rotana Music Group appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Hearty congratulations to British artist Raye, who sits atop the latest official singles chart in the UK with her latest release ‘Escapism’. The post Independence (and TikTok) fuelled Raye’s rise to UK chart summit appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Electronic music star Calvin Harris is the latest artist planning a livestream on TikTok, with ‘The Calvin Harris Experience’ on 13 January. The post Calvin Harris taps Wave for a virtual concert on TikTok appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok’s difficult end to 2022 in the US, related to security tensions with China, continued right up to the wire. The post TikTok is still battling against the political winds in the US appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

A new feature enables TikTok users to tap on any ‘For You’ video’s share panel to see why it was recommended to you. The post TikTok gets more transparent about ‘For You’ recommendations appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

One of the prime platforms behind the vertical videos trend is… going horizontal? Well, kind of. The post TikTok gets less vertical with horizontal full-screen mode test appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

What was that we wrote yesterday in our look back at the big TikTok news stories of 2022? The post US Senator Marco Rubio wants TikTok to be banned in the US appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok was never far from the music industry headlines in 2022, for better or worse. We’re looking at the biggest talking points. The post 12 big talking points around TikTok and music in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok is ending 2022 with more legal headaches in the US: two lawsuits filed by Indiana’s attorney general against the company, focusing on user data and children’s safety. The post Indiana’s attorney general files two lawsuits against TikTok appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok has announced its latest music livestream, and it’s coming from Northern Irish duo Bicep at Alexandra Palace in London. The post Bicep is the latest face of TikTok’s #ElectronicMusic campaign appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

If labels weren’t already pushing for a share of TikTok’s advertising revenues, the latest predictions from research firm Omdia should change that. The post TikTok tipped to grow its annual ad revenues to $122.5bn by 2027 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

On the TikTok, on the TikTok, on the TikTok, all day long, on the TikTok… Well, not all day long if we’re honest: British band Wet Leg’s 24 November London concert will be streamed on TikTok for a shorter period of time, but at least it will be live. The post TikTok to stream Wet Leg concert […]

The IFPI’s Global Music Report makes plenty of springtime headlines with its figures for the recorded music industry. The post IFPI explores 2022’s music-listening trends in its new report appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The post Behind The Single appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

There has been a steady increase in the chorus of grumbling from music rightsholders about how TikTok pays royalties for music. The post Pressure mounts on TikTok over its music royalties payments appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Well, TikTok isn’t just trumpeting classical music in its latest promo: it’s celloing it, fluting it and bassooning it for good measure. The post TikTok trumpets #ClassicalMusic (with Hans Zimmer’s help) appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Trendpop is a SaaS platform and a data-driven tool designed to help users strategise their TikTok presence and navigate the app’s ecosystem. The post Tools :: Trendpop appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

“Who killed the social media ad boom?” asked the Financial Times on Friday, in a piece sparked by the estimates from research firm eMarketer. The post eMarketer predicts tenfold slowdown of social-media ad growth appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok is on the defensive again, after a report by Forbes making some very serious allegations about the app. The post TikTok hits back at Forbes allegations over tracking tech appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Amid all the speculation about TikTok Music, TikTok has been quietly working on… a new music format. It’s called StemDrop. The post TikTok debuts StemDrop music format with UMG, Syco and Samsung appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok moving into audio is already the subject of frenetic speculation, with rumours that a TikTok Music streaming service (or just a geographic expansion of Resso with deeper TikTok integration) may be imminent. The post Report suggests podcasts could be TikTok’s next expansion appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok has been pitching brands and agencies on the idea of amping up their spending in its app even more. The post Latest TikTok advertising features include Focused View appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok announced a range of new features focused on editing yesterday, including making it easier to edit video clips and sounds. The post TikTok adds more editing tools and a new ‘Photo Mode’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Gramrphone emerged in 2020 as one of the startups trying to help artists audio-livestream to fans from their homes or studios. The post Gramrphone adds feature to help musicians livestream to TikTok appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The interesting and very spirited counterpoint from Techdirt to the debate about TikTok’s data, privacy and links to China is worth a read. The post Techdirt takes TikTok critics to task over privacy hypocrisy appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Speculation about whether and when TikTok’s parent company ByteDance will go public has been quite the rollercoaster ride. The post ByteDance CFO tells staff it has no current plans for an IPO appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Catalogue music – traditionally defined as songs over 18 months old – has always been an intriguing proposition, containing locked-away value that sometimes seemed difficult to eke out. The post Chartmetric report challenges catalogue definition appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The idea of songs being “leaked” in the early internet era had an illicit thrill, but the concept has changed somewhat since it became clear that considerable social media excitement followed a leak The post TikTok’s SoundOn service allows official pre-releases of songs appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance already has a couple of music streaming services: Resso in India and a few other markets, and Qishui Yinyue in China. The post TikTok’s latest trademark filing hints at a music service appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It’s no secret that tech businesses are steeling themselves for an economic slowdown – or in other words, initiating job cuts and hiring freezes. The post Report claims TikTok is laying off staff amid wider economic uncertainty appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Break My Soul? Beyoncé is certainly on track to break a few records on TikTok, having joined the app and posted her first video yesterday. The post Beyoncé joined TikTok yesterday and already has 3.5m followers appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Its second annual ‘social media safety index’ analyses how well the various platforms score for LGBTQ safety, privacy and expression. The post GLAAD warns that social media services are failing LGBTQ users appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The company has announced the latest changes that it’s making to make its experience more positive for users. The post TikTok reveals its latest efforts to be ‘safe and entertaining’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

When social media companies sign music licensing deals covering user-generated content, those users do NOT include brands. The post Brands be warned: TikTok’s UGC music licences don’t include you appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

As the recent debate around the pressure on artists to go viral on TikTok shows, the short-form video platform remains one of the most important tools in artist marketing. However, as always, strategy is key and music marketers have a growing number of tools available to refine their artist’s TikTok strategy.  This week, we’re walking […]

Using online events to publicise a new release – or other major announcement – is what counts in 2022. But it’s also easy for one to fizzle out on the launchpad. So whether you want to sneak out snippets on TikTok, or build a virtual showcase in Roblox, this Sandbox Guide explains how to create […]

There is keen interest in how the big social media platforms’ systems for sharing money with creators are evolving. The post Facebook and TikTok add new ways for users to make money appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok is making music concerts an increasingly prominent aspect to its relationships with artists. The latest example is Camila Cabello. The post Camila Cabello set to play an XR-powered TikTok concert appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

In the fraught final months of Donald Trump’s US presidency, he pushed for TikTok to either be sold to an American company or publicly listed. The post Trump is gone but a TikTok / Oracle deal could still happen appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Culture site Mic has an interview with the CEO of social agency VRTCL, Griffin Haddrill, and one part stood out to us as worth thinking about. The post Why 4am might be the best time to try to go viral on TikTok appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The boundary between user-generated content and sponsored or branded content is important for music rightsholders, who feel strongly that if a video on a social app or video service is being paid for by a brand, it should be a proper sync. But what about brands who want to use original music for their own […]

NFTs as a “creator empowerment tool” eh? That’s the pitch TikTok is making with the launch of its first collection under the brand of TikTok Top Moments. The post TikTok launches its first NFT collection (including Lil Nas X) appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

You’ll see a lot of YouTube videos when searching for artists on Google. What you won’t see are TikTok and Instagram videos. This may be changing soon. The post Report: Google may soon be indexing TikTok and Instagram videos appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Beat the ‘Tok: Beatport runs TikTok DJ duet challenge We occasionally veer away from artist-centric campaigns here to include interesting things that companies (usually DSPs, but not always) do in terms of their own marketing. Electronic and dance music specialist download store Beatport has created what it is calling TikTok Transitions, its own challenge on […]

Douyin is the Chinese version of TikTok, and like other apps that are popular with young people in China, it’s facing pressure to limit the time they spend on its service. Cue what Douyin described in a blog post as “the most stringent youth protection measures in the history of the platform” – a ‘youth mode’ for people […]

Could TikTok’s parent company ByteDance be about to provide competition in a streaming market dominated by Tencent Music and NetEase Cloud Music? The post ByteDance tipped to launch music streaming app Feile in China appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok has commissioned and published two new studies to trumpet its impact on music and culture, although a third study also published yesterday – an investigation of its recommendation algorithm’s workings by the Wall Street Journal – offers a considerably less sunny outlook on the social app’s impact. On the sunny side, MRC Data authored a study of TikTok and […]

We’ve seen artists debut tracks as clips on TikTok ahead of their official release, but Anne-Marie is going a step further and making her entire new album available for TikTokers to use. Yesterday, clips of all the tracks from the album were released on TikTok, ahead of its launch on Friday. Meanwhile, Anne-Marie will be […]

Well, of course that guy on the skateboard who made that Fleetwood Mac song go viral on TikTok is now selling that video as a non-fungible token. Nathan Apodaca is hoping to trouser at least $500k from the NFT sale of his 23-second video, although there’s one wrinkle: it won’t include ‘Dreams’. Apodaca’s representative told showbiz site […]

Artist Yungblud is re-releasing a track from 2019 due to TikTok, but no, this isn’t because someone went viral singing along to it on a skateboard. Instead, Yungblud ran a duet contest on TikTok inviting fans to freestyle their own verse over his track ‘Parents’. One of the most impressive entries was from a young singer-songwriter […]

TikTok is launching a new feature described as its ‘music hub’ in the UK, which it says will help people to see which tracks, artists and playlists are currently trending on the service. It will be accessed from TikTok’s ‘Discover’ screen, and people will also be pointed in its direction if they search for music […]

‘Company X not buying Company Y’ may seem like a pointless news story: we may as well tell you that Music Ally isn’t buying Spotify, right? But news that Twitter was in talks about a potential acquisition of Indian tech company ShareChat *is* interesting, even if the deal appears to have run into the rocks. TechCrunch claimed […]

ByteDance appears to have seen off attempts by the last US administration to force it to sell TikTok to an American company or shut it down. Now the company can refocus its attention on a country where its social video app *has* been shut down for a while: India. Bloomberg reported that ByteDance has a plan: a […]

Fresh from inking a spangly new deal with Universal Music Group, TikTok is preparing to host a livestreamed concert by one of its key artists. Justin Bieber will play a full-length concert on TikTok on 14 February (yes, for Valentine’s Day) with a re-airing the following day. It’s very much a fan-service event too: Bieber will be […]

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is cutting back its workforce in India, after the government there decided to renew its ban on TikTok and other apps of Chinese origin. Reuters reported on an internal memo from ByteDance setting out its plans. “We initially hoped that this situation would be short-lived…we find that has not been the case,” it […]

There’s a long history of video and social media platforms building detailed ‘playbooks’ – resources teaching the people using their services how to build audiences and make good stuff. TikTok is no different: it has just revamped its educational materials with the launch of the TikTok Creator Portal. Aimed at creators old and new, it promises best-practice […]

As we write this story, Scottish artist Nathan Evans is on course for a top 10 hit in the UK with ‘Wellerman’ – his sea-shanty cover that took TikTok by storm. There’s an obligatory heartwarming story about him giving up his job as a postman for a career in music. But behind this, there’s an industry move: Evans […]

“Soon may the Wellerman come, to bring us sugar and tea and rum…” In a day of news with plenty of worries for our industry – Brexit, concert cancellations etc – here’s some light relief: the latest music craze on TikTok is sea shanties. A growing number of TikTokers are singing traditional sailors’ songs, often […]

TikTok has its first nine-figure star this morning, with Charli D’Amelio becoming the first TikToker to reach more than 100 million followers on the platform. What’s even more startling is the fact that she only joined TikTok in the spring of 2019, so that audience has been built in just over a year and a half. D’Amelio […]

We’ve had George Michael, Prince and John Lennon. Now TikTok’s collection of heritage artists has another entry: Queen. The British rock band now have an official TikTok profile, set up by their management with Universal Music Group/Hollywood Records. What’s more, 10 Queen tracks have been made available for TikTokers to use in their own videos. Sensibly, it’s […]

Mobile analytics firm App Annie is predicting that TikTok will have more than 1.2 billion monthly active users by the end of 2021, after crossing the one billion mark this year. That would be some growth: figures published recently as part of TikTok’s legal battle in the US showed that it had 689.2 million monthly active users worldwide in […]

The latest estimates for the monthly smartphone apps are out from research firm Sensor Tower, and there’s no change at the top of the top-grossing non-game apps list for October. TikTok generated $115m of user spending that month, according to the rankings. That’s more than six times the figure from October 2019, with 86% of it coming […]

We suspect that Donald Trump’s mind isn’t really on the proposed ban of TikTok in the US right now: he has bigger priorities this week. But remember: even if he loses the US presidential election (not to mention accepting the result) the handover won’t come until mid-January, so TikTok’s US status could well become a […]

Remember when Triller sued TikTok for patent infringement in July? Whatever happened to that case? What happened this week is that TikTok struck back with a counter lawsuit. At issue is a June 2017 patent awarded to a children’s apps firm called Mibblio, whose co-founders David Lieberman and Sammy Rubin also co-founded Triller – which says it now owns the […]

Our main feature focuses on TikTok’s eventful 2020 so far, from the deepening of its relationship with artists and the music industry to its tangles with the Trump administration, along with the rise of the short video apps category more generally. Our Second Look section analyses recent stories and data around Hipgnosis Songs Fund; Tencent […]

Sam Smith’s new album ‘Love Goes’ is out later this month, and they’re pulling out plenty of promotional stops around its release, including new single ‘Diamonds’. The latter is getting a web-based augmented reality music video in partnership with Spotify. Dreamed up by agency Powster, it gets fans to scan an image to pop up […]

Removing hateful content from a social media or streaming service is a constantly moving target as new movements and forms of hate emerge, and new tricks to avoid moderation. TikTok is the latest platform to announce how its policies are adapting. “While our Trust & Safety teams already work to remove hate speech and hateful ideologies, […]

It sounds like a supergroup for the ages, doesn’t it? But what George Michael, Prince and John Lennon have in common is that their estates and labels have been working with TikTok to bring their legacies into the world of short video clips. A licensing deal for Prince’s music plus an official TikTok profile came in […]

There’s a price on everything in the influencer world, and with a startup called PearPop, that includes collaborating with your favourite TikTok stars. The company has announced a marketplace for TikTokers to charge fans for collab posts, and according to TechCrunch it already has more than 25,000 fans signed up. The fees are public: a duet, stitch or […]

Investment bank Piper Sandler publishes a semi-annual study of US teenagers – 9,800 of them for its latest drop. It covers all kinds of topics, from social and political issues to favoured brands, but digital habits are also included. The big news from the latest study is the claim that TikTok has just overtaken Instagram to become the […]

In August, Dua Lipa launched her #DuaVideo challenge on TikTok, inviting fans to submit videos based on makeup, animation or dance using her ‘Levitating’ single. The promise was that the best creators would make it into a music video for the track. TikTok says that the contest generated more than 150k videos which were watched more […]

TikTok’s Creator Fund started as a $200m commitment in July to be distributed among US-based TikTokers trying to build careers on the platform. It quickly expanded to a promised $1bn over three years, with a European fund following in September aiming for $300m over three years. Beyond those big headline numbers, though, details of how […]

We’re still waiting to find out what the Trump administration will do in response to a judge blocking its ban of TikTok in the US. We suspect the president won’t be too keen on its latest feature though: an in-app guide to the 2020 elections. It will provide TikTok users with information about candidates; explain how […]

Well, it sort of has, and sort of hasn’t. We’ll explain. Last week we reported on the marketing campaign around Jennifer Lopez and Maluma’s new singles ‘Pa Ti’ and ‘Lonely’, including a #PatiChallenge on TikTok launched with influencer Charli D’Amelio. Her video has been watched 24.4m times so far, but videos using the challenge’s hashtag have racked […]

Wake up, take a look at the US app stores (if you can) and see that… TikTok remains available to download. That’s because a US District Court judge issued a preliminary injunction last night to prevent the Trump administration’s proposed ban on new downloads of the app from taking effect. The judge’s written explanation of the ruling […]

“If you don’t know me I’m M to the B / Coming in hard, you better watch it Sophie…” If those lyrics mean nothing to you, then you clearly aren’t an aficionado of the mid-2010s Blackpool grime scene, nor do you have a tweenage TikTok fan in your household. The lyrics are from a 2016 […]

Jennifer Lopez and Maluma have just released a pair of singles together: ‘Pa Ti’ and ‘Lonely’, and like a growing number of artists, they unveiled the music videos in a YouTube premiere, yesterday. However, they also held an afterparty (a #PaTiAfterParty in hashtag form) which saw J-Lo and Maluma chatting about the collaborations, promoting their upcoming movie […]

The latest distributor to announce a partnership with TikTok is TuneCore, which hopes its latest promotion will tempt more artists into putting their music on the social app. Between 22 and 29 September, TuneCore artists can upload a track to TikTok for free. This follows the deal signed with TikTok by TuneCore’s parent company Believe in July, […]

President Trump may have tentatively approved TikTok’s deal to avoid a ban in the US, but what will the Chinese government make of it? Judging by state-media outlet China Daily’s blistering editorial column this morning – title: ‘No disguising proposed TikTok deal is a dirty and underhanded trick’ – the omens aren’t good. “What the United States has done […]

It’s been another topsy-turvy weekend in the US for TikTok. On Friday, the Department of Commerce announced that as of 20 September (Sunday) US app stores would be banned from making the app available to download, or for it to be updated for existing users. Yet on Saturday, the department announced that “in the light of recent positive developments” […]

Lead: Twitch for artists – Artists were drifting towards livestreaming platform Twitch before COVID-19 hit, and Twitch has been making overtures to musicians for a while. But since live performance was halted, interest in the platform has never been higher, and Twitch is welcoming artists – and their fans – with open arms. But Twitch demands […]

The deadline is approaching for TikTok to be sold, shut down, or find an alternative solution that satisfies President Trump’s administration. After tech firm Oracle said it was part of a proposal submitted to the administration as a “trusted technology provider”, more details have emerged of the plan. “ByteDance will place TikTok’s global business in […]

The latest TikTok controversy doesn’t involve music, or even Donald Trump. Instead, it’s about a video of a man shooting himself, which has been shared by a number of popular meme accounts on the app (that’s a link to a news article about this: we’re not going to link to any of the clips) even as TikTok’s […]

A moment of relief for TikTok executives: a music story making headlines, rather than the latest revelation about the company’s potential sale or ban in the US. TikTok is getting a “five-day premiere” of the new single from David Guetta and Sia, and it’s a useful pointer to how the app is developing as a […]

Spotify has filed a patent for a feature that would allow users to create “video moments” with accompanying music within the Spotify app, Digital Music News reports. The short videos, with high-quality embedded music, would be sharable outside of the app and would be discoverable alongside the song itself: so searching for a song could also […]

Apps are fond of keeping users within the app, and creators like to ping fans all over the internet to where they can get them to pay for things. To strike a balance, TikTok has followed Youtube and Twitch in partnering with Teespring to allow TikTok’s creators to sell merch they’ve created on Teespring within TikTok, […]

Strap in: the TikTok sale process may be even speedier than President Trump expected. CNBC reported today that TikTok is “nearing an agreement” to sell its operations in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – as soon as next week. Its sources claimed that the deal could be worth between $20bn and $30bn, but […]

We promised you twists in this tale. TikTok is taking to the courts to battle the Trump administration’s executive order forcing its sale or shutdown in the US, but it will be doing so without its recently appointed CEO. Former Disney executive Kevin Mayer has resigned barely three months after taking the reins at TikTok […]

In 2020 you’re nothing in the music industry without your own custom AR filter, layering brightly covered digital swirls over camera displays. Legendary artists such as Prince, Pink Floyd and The Beatles have all launched their own filters on social networks – the Prince estate offering a Purple Rain filter on TikTok and WMG’s Firepit […]

Dua Lipa is the latest major artist to launch a TikTok challenge, but in her case, she’s looking for fans to appear in her next proper music video. The challenge is #DuaVideo and runs for a week, having been launched yesterday with a video by Dua herself. Fans are being challenged to submit clips showing their creative skills […]

TikTok has followed through on its promise to sue President Trump’s administration over its recent executive order setting a deadline for the app’s US operations to be sold or shut down. The lawsuit includes some important new figures on TikTok’s business globally, as well as in the US.  Globally, TikTok grew from 54.8 million monthly active […]

We do try to choose our words carefully when writing about the world of politics, but it seems increasingly uncontroversial to suggest that the process around the potential sale of TikTok’s US operations… well, it stinks. First President Trump suggested that the US Treasury should get a piece of the transaction that’s been enforced by […]

Earlier this month, President Trump set a 45-day deadline after which transactions by US companies with ByteDance or Tencent’s WeChat would be banned. That was seen as a deadline for a sale of TikTok’s US operations, but now a new executive order from the president has set a longer deadline for that. ByteDance has been ordered do divest all […]

Last month, Music Ally took part in the BPI and ERA’s New Kids on the Block online event, looking at children’s digital habits and what they mean for music. Research company Kids Insights produced a report for the event too, which has been published today. We contributed a section on some of the interesting stories […]

Who’d have thought it: untangling a company from its parent corporation takes time. Reuters is reporting that if Microsoft wants to buy TikTok within President Trump’s 45-day deadline, it will surely have to negotiate more time to actually separate the social app from ByteDance. “A technically complex endeavor that could test the patience of President Donald Trump’s […]

Entertainment mogul and ‘Idol’ founder Simon Fuller has been busy with his multi-national pop band Now United in recent years, but now he’s got a new project on the go. It’s a partnership with TikTok to put a new group together. The press release doesn’t have many details other than the promise of an “in-app audition process on TikTok”, […]

Events around TikTok and its proposed ban in the US are moving so fast, any data on how consumers are responding risks being out of date as soon as it’s published. Still, Sensor Tower has some new numbers on how TikTok’s rivals are benefitting from the uncertainty. “As talk of a ban ramped up from […]

As promised, President Trump has signed an executive order banning all transactions by US companies with TikTok’s parent company ByteDance. However, a separate order extends the ban to messaging app WeChat AND its parent company Tencent – including “any subsidiary of that entity”. Strap yourselves in. Given Tencent’s web of investments in and from music industry […]

Having published its latest financial results this morning, Warner Music Group held its quarterly earnings call this afternoon, with CEO Steve Cooper and CFO Eric Levin fielding questions from analysis. One of those questions focused on Spotify’s podcasts expansion, and whether it’s causing tensions around the potential impact on royalties paid out to companies like […]

Events have moved fast since Friday for TikTok’s business in the US, it’s fair to say. We’ll start with the latest news: confirmation from Microsoft that it’s in talks about an acquisition of TikTok in the US and certain other countries, with a mid-September deadline to reach an agreement with the app’s parent company ByteDance […]

Will Josh Richards be the next new music star to emerge on TikTok? TalentX certainly hopes so. It’s the digital talent management company behind influencer collective Sway LA, of which Richards is a member, and he’s the first signing to the company’s new label TalentX Records. It’s a partnership with Warner Records, which it claims […]

TikTok is paying a growing number of music creators through its licensing deals – see this week’s agreements with Believe and the NMPA for the latest on that. Now the social app is launching a $200m fund in the US for ‘creators’ more generally – as in people creating videos on its platform. “We’re launching the TikTok Creator Fund to encourage those […]

Another day, another licensing deal for TikTok, and this one’s a biggie. It’s signed a global, multi-year agreement with the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) in the US. That’s big because the NMPA has been rattling its sabre at TikTok for some time over licensing, with publishers angry at the lack of royalties coming their […]

Joe Rogan, Kim Kardashian West, Michelle Obama… and now Addison Rae. Spotify’s lineup of podcast exclusives continues to swell, with Rae the latest to join its roster. She’s currently the second most popular star on TikTok with 51.4 million followers – behind only Charli D’Amelio’s 72.6 million – and now she has a deal with Spotify’s […]

TikTok remains banned in India, and some of the rival short-form video services there are enjoying their moment in the sun as a result. One of them, Roposo, has given some startling figures to Bloomberg on its growth in the wake of the ban. “It’s peaking at 500,000 new users an hour and expects to […]

Apparently rumours on Twitter have suggested that music artist Jason DeRulo earns around $75k for every TikTok video that he posts. Complex went to the horse’s mouth to establish whether it’s true, asking DeRulo about it in an interview. “I think it’s tacky to say what I do make from them, but it’s far more than […]

Artist Ashnikko’s breakthrough last year was fuelled by TikTok, when her track ‘Stupid’ went viral. Now, for her new track ‘Daisy’ she is prioritising the platform – this time with Apple’s music hardware brand Beats by Dre on board as a marketing partner. That means a music video with prominent placement for the new PowerbeatsPro headphones, […]

Analytics firm Sensor Tower has published its latest rankings for mobile apps, reporting that TikTok was the most downloaded non-gaming app globally in June 2020, ahead of Zoom and Facebook. The company claims that TikTok was downloaded more than 87m times across Apple and Google’s app stores, up 52.7% year-on-year. However, its top two markets […]

TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have been hit by a ban in India as part of a wider crackdown on apps of Chinese origin. But there may be trouble brewing for the companies in the US, too, due both to the political jockeying around hardball trade negotiations between the US and China, and specific […]

There’s a big, startling figure in the latest story about the Indian government’s decision to ban 59 Chinese-origin apps, including TikTok. “An insider at TikTok parent ByteDance is telling Caixin the ban could come with a heavy price tag, costing the company more than $6 billion in lost revenue — a sum greater than all […]

Could a global pandemic take the shine off the growth in the amount of money people spend on and within mobile apps? It could not. “Consumers spent a combined total of $50.1 billion worldwide on the App Store and Google Play in the first half of 2020,” claimed app analytics firm Sensor Tower. “This was 23.4 […]

There has been a lot of debate about which music licences TikTok has already, which ones it doesn’t (publishers have been particularly sharp on this one) and what it needs to do next to ensure performers and songwriters are getting paid for usage of their work in its app. So it’s interesting to see TikTok press-releasing […]

The rise of TikTok, and the assorted controversies around it, have meant there’s a lot more scrutiny of the economics of the app and its parent company ByteDance. Which is welcome for the music industry, as rightsholders go into licensing negotiations keen to strike as advantageous deals as possible. There are two new bouts of […]

Sit down for this shocker: children spend quite a lot of time on YouTube and TikTok! Who knew? Next thing, someone will be telling us that they quite like Fortnite too. But no snark: a company called Qustodio, whose product is a parental control app, has been digging into its data to quantify exactly how […]

There have been some excellent bananas in music: Andy Warhol’s artwork for the Velvet Underground & Nico; Bananarama; Melt-Banana… Can Conkarah feat. Shaggy’s single ‘Banana’ follow in their footsteps? It’s already a bona-fide TikTok sensation. The track is based around Harry Belafonte’s 1956 hit ‘Banana Boat (Day-O)’, and comes with a #BananaDrop challenge based around […]

A new social-video app called Zynn has been making waves by springing from nowhere to top Apple’s App Store chart in the US. It looks a LOT like TikTok: you can create and watch 15-second videos (“with massive music library”). But as it turns out, the app didn’t just spring from nowhere: Turner Novak of investment firm […]

TikTok has a new boss, and he’s a media-industry heavyweight. Kevin Mayer is joining TikTok’s parent company Bytedance from Disney, where he was most recently chairman of direct-to-consumer and international – a key role overseeing the launch of the Disney+ video streaming service. Mayer will be chief operating officer of Bytedance, leading “music, gaming, Helo, […]

In February 2019, TikTok paid $5.7m as part of a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission following a child-privacy investigation dating back to the Musical·ly app (not us!) that TikTok merged with in 2018. Besides paying the $5.7m, TikTok promised to make changes that would ensure children’s personal information was not being shared, alongside other protections […]

It won’t come as a big surprise to learn that TikTok is one of the digital services benefitting from the Covid-19 lockdown – in usage, if not necessarily in revenues. According to eMarketer, in March TikTok added more than 12 million unique visitors in the US alone. Wait: ‘visitors’? These are based on figures from comScore, […]

TikTok is launching a new feature, ‘Donation Stickers’, that will enable creators on the app to encourage their followers to donate to charities. This isn’t only about music, but music industry charities MusiCares and Help Musicians are two of the first to be supported through the feature. The stickers can be added to videos, and […]

Do you want to upload amazing dancing videos to TikTok like The Young People do, but are hamstrung by a lack of dancing skills? Fear not: AI is coming to your rescue. Possibly. Check out a new startup called Boogie, whose teaser website claims its technology will “generate deepfake dances with a single image” and thus […]

Earlier this year in our piece about how we worked with Atlanta rapper K Camp to capitalise on the TikTok success of his track ‘Lottery’, we explained that changing its title on streaming services to ‘Lottery (Renegade)’ because the second word was what kids were searching for – thanks to the producer tag in the clip that went […]

Drake released his new track ‘Toosie Slide’ on 2nd April, and as we reported before, TikTok and other social platforms were part of its marketing strategy right from the start, thanks to the recruitment of some prominent dancer influencers. How’s that campaign going? Well, there have been more than 2.8bn views of TikTok videos using the #toosieslide […]

The live sessions and the livestreaming just keeps coming. TikTok has created a new Live Sessions series in the UK based around British artists. The first acts signed up to appear are Ashnikko (10th April), Mabel (14th April), Tinie Tempah (21st April), Jax Jones and Ellie Goulding (dates TBC). The aim is that each artist […]

Imagine trying to launch a project at this specific point in time that involved a group of TikTok stars living together in a Big Brother-style house. Impossible. Luckily for agency Fanbytes, said TikTokers moved into its new ‘ByteHouse’ before the current social-distancing lockdown in the UK, so its project can proceed as planned. That project […]

If you’ve been spotting Drake’s new track ‘Toosie Slide’ all over your socials in recent days, it’s no accident. Rolling Stone has a piece explaining how the artist enlisted some popular dancing influencers to promote the single. Toosie, Hiii Key, Ayo & Teo (the latter are a duo) are the influencers in question, popular on TikTok, Instagram […]

We reported last week on TikTok signing short-term licensing deals with major labels, as a bridge to longer agreements at a later date. However, Bytedance’s social app still has some licensing headaches on the publishing side, and US body the National Music Publishers Association is threatening to make them worse. According to the Financial Times, […]

One of the most inventive approaches to livestreaming so far this year came from British artist L Devine, who went on an online-only ‘URL Tour’ when a planned physical tour was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Instead of towns or cities, the URL Tour was structured around platforms: Instagram Live on 16 March; Twitter on 20 […]

With many parents exhausted already by homeschooling, and relaxing their device-usage rules once lessons are done, we suspect TikTok’s servers are getting a mighty battering. That’s going to be good news for the top creators on the social app though, whose audiences may see a spike. Tubefilter notes that this includes a change at the top of […]

Music Ally is trying to write a story every working day, rounding up the good, practical things happening in and around our industry: focusing on relief efforts and other initiatives from the music industry and music / tech communities. Start today with Bandcamp’s update on how last Friday’s big music sale went. “On a typical Friday, […]

A new report from research firm Sensor Tower has found that a third of the biggest new apps in 2019 were “sidekick apps” for the likes of Instagram and TikTok. What are sidekick apps? They are apps that work in conjunction with ‘mother’ apps, adding new features or enhancements that the original app is lacking. According to […]

TikTok has been under a lot of scrutiny in recent months, in the US particularly, over how its content moderation policies work. Now the app has appointed what US general manager Vanessa Pappas described as “an external council of leading experts to advise TikTok on content moderation policies covering a wide range of topics… thought leaders who […]

British band Years & Years swiftly set up a TikTok account at the end of last week – in a large part because their cover of 2003’s ‘Breathe’ (by Sean Paul ft. Blu Cantrell) from six years ago was having a viral impact on the app without any push from them. They were able to capitalise on […]

Atlanta rapper K Camp began releasing mixtapes in 2011, before signing to Interscope in 2014, building up a loyal following. However, the release of his track ‘Lottery’ in early 2019 changed everything. The track initially had a slow build through platforms including Instagram, YouTube and Triller, but then a few months later users of TikTok […]

Lead: Triller is not a TikTok killer – but it is certainly proving to be a hearty contender. At the moment, it is strongest in the US and it skews heavily towards hip-hop as its in-built soundtrack. Its ambitions are, however, more global and the genres it covers will naturally expand as it grows internationally. […]

You like the app – now try the festival. The storied London Palladium theatre will be hosting ‘For You Stage, a Live Show Feat TikTok Superstars’ on 24 and 25 May this year. Named after the ‘For You’ discovery tab in TikTok, the show “will incorporate some of the biggest content creators on the TikTok […]

We reported last week on TikTok’s coup in securing a 30-second exclusive preview of ‘ON’ – a track from the new BTS album – ahead of its official release to streaming services. The app challenged fans to create their own videos for an #onchallenge, and as you’d expect, the BTS Army responded in droves. So much so, that at […]

Boomy is the startup that’s helping anyone (non-musicians included) to create AI-generated music, and then release it on streaming services. According to the company’s latest update, its users have created more than 370,000 original songs in the last year, with 70% of those people never having made a song before. The update also explains Boomy’s latest features, […]

Lead: Influencers are a growing part of music marketing but tighter rules on what they can do (and how explicit they must be in declaring their interests), as well as a series of scandals, are making working here increasingly complicated – if not increasingly risky. Some are arguing they still have power, but others are […]

The British music industry is gearing up for next week’s Brit Awards in London, and TikTok will be on board as one of the event’s key digital partners. The app will be live-streaming the  arrival of artists and celebrities on its official Brits channel, complete with a red-carpet live performance from Lewis Capaldi. The night will […]

British YouTuber KSI is a social media sensation. His YouTube channel has 21m subscribers, while his November boxing match against fellow influencer Logan Paul was described as “the biggest amateur boxing match in history”. KSI has also been releasing music for some time: his first single came out in 2013, while in November 2019 he […]

The Verge’s headline about Justin Bieber’s latest marketing campaign is pretty tart: ‘Justin Bieber is increasingly desperate for ‘Yummy’ to go viral on TikTok’. Ouch. It refers to Bieber’s Super Bowl campaign with restaurant chain Chipotle, which was heavily focused on TikTok, and videos made by influencers on that app. Bieber launched an official profile on […]

TikTok isn’t just about musical videos, and some of its non-music content has already sparked controversies around moderation and censorship issues. India, which is TikTok’s biggest international market right now, is a particular hotbed of sensitivities when it comes to political statements. The BBC has a lengthy piece about the growth of “shadow banning” – where restrictions are […]

There is a lot going on in this TikTok video featuring musician Nicky Jam and YouTuber Teala Dunn: a motorbike chase, a fight scene, drones and a daring, tracksuited car-park-clambering escape. Published through Sony’s official TikTok profile (that’s big Sony, the overall company, rather than its Sony Music subsidiary) it claims to be “the most epic TikTok […]

TikTok and indie licensing-agency Merlin have announced a licensing deal covering use of music from the latter’s member labels “wherever the platform is available around the world”. The deal is effective immediately, and financial terms have not been disclosed. Cue warm words from both sides. “Independent artists and labels are such a crucial part of […]

The streams of the two biggest current digital youth-trends are crossing this month, as the publisher of Fortnite launched a dance contest on TikTok. The #EmoteRoyaleContest will be catnip for Fortnite’s tween’n’teen superfans too, as it gives them a chance to get their own dance routines added to the game as one of its ‘emotes’. […]

App analytics firm Sensor Tower has published its year-end report on the apps market in 2019. Among its conclusions: TikTok was the second most-downloaded app across Apple and Google’s app stores in 2019, behind only WhatsApp, with nearly 750m downloads over the year. That put TikTok ahead of Messenger, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat, with the caveat […]

One of many mysteries of this algorithm-driven age is how TikTok’s ‘For You’ feed works, in terms of the videos it recommends to users of its app. However, a report in the Financial Times this morning suggests that TikTok may be considering adding something a bit more… curated to its offering. The newspaper describes it as “a […]

Welcome to the first Sandbox of 2020. Lead: It is now 10 years since we published the very first edition of Sandbox, so to start a new decade we speak to marketers from around the world about the tools and trends that shaped the past decade of music marketing as well as the ones they believe […]

TikTok has been subject to intense scrutiny recently over its censorship and moderation policies, and specifically the extent to which its global approach is guided by views on what is or isn’t acceptable in China. Now the company has published a revised and expanded set of its community guidelines, promising “greater transparency” and a clearer structure of 10 […]

This year we’ve picked 42 (also the answer to life, the universe and everything as fans of Douglas Adams will know) of the trends and moments we found most significant in 2019. What are they? *takes deep breath* industry growth; the European Copyright Directive and Music Modernization Act; Spotify’s two-sided marketplace; Apple Music’s bundled future; […]

You don’t have to be a boomer to think that the idea of sharing a house with 19 TikTok stars has the makings of a living hell. But in the case of the Hype House in Los Angeles, it’s part of a burgeoning social-media trend. The New York Times has explained what’s going on: actually, only a […]

The latest brand working with TikTok is sports-entertainment organisation WWE, which has created an official account on the social app. However, music is also a key part of the deal, with WWE licensing the entrance themes for more than 30 of its past and present wrestlers for use on TikTok. That means users of the app will […]

Bytedance has begun testing its new music-streaming service Resso in India and Indonesia. Music Ally received a tip-off yesterday about the app’s availability, and began researching it, but since then Bloomberg has published a report claiming that the new app has been downloaded 27k times since its stealthy launch, but also suggesting that Resso has […]

Ole Obermann was Warner Music Group’s chief digital officer until June 2019, when he left the company after reportedly declining to renew his contract. Recent gossip had suggested that Obermann was joining TikTok and/or its parent company Bytedance in a key music role. And lo: Obermann has now confirmed that he has joined the companies as global […]

Yesterday, we reported on a lawsuit filed against TikTok in the US over its predecessor app Musical·ly’s handling of children’s data. There’s a speedy update on the case: it’s been settled. “TikTok is firmly committed to safeguarding the data of its users, especially our younger users,” a spokesperson told The Verge. “Although we disagree with much […]

TikTok currently finds itself in a position that YouTube knows only too well, being simultaneously hailed as a kingmaker for breaking new artists, and a hot potato when it comes to the question of licensing and royalties for music on its platform. Part of TikTok’s charm offensive is partnerships with artists, and the latest example […]

After all the recent controversies around data privacy and censorship, TikTok’s leadership won’t have enjoyed seeing this intro to a story on news site Netzpolitik. “Leaked documents reveal how TikTok hid videos of people with disabilities. Queer and fat users were also pushed out of view.” The story concerns a list of ‘special users’ whose posts’ […]

TikTok has been under fire recently over accusations that its global moderation policies are too in thrall to the government of its parent company’s homeland, China. The line coming out of TikTok executives in the US this month has been that censorship decisions on the platform in the west are NOT driven by Beijing. That’s […]

TikTok is testing a new music-related feature in Thailand: selling tickets. The company is partnering with several local companies, including BEC Tero (which promotes concerts, owns a record label and produces films and TV shows); Neon Festivals; ticketing firm Ticketmelon; and cinema chain Major Cineplex. For now, TikTok will be selling tickets for 500 films […]

As parent company Bytedance prepares to launch its dedicated music-streaming service, TikTok has reached a new milestone. Well, it has according to research firm SensorTower, anyway. It claims that TikTok has now been downloaded more than 1.5bn times from Apple’s App Store and Android’s Google Play, including 614m downloads in 2019 alone. “It’s currently the third most […]

‘Killer’ is one of the most overused words in the field of tech journalism, when it’s appended to the name of digital services thought to be under threat from a rival or copycat launched by a much-bigger technology company. Was Apple Music a ‘Spotify-killer’? Nope. Was Google+ a ‘Facebook-killer’? Absolutely not. Vine’s killer turned out […]

TikTok’s difficult end-of-2019 in the US continues: now the Washington Post has been digging around in the company’s internal policies. ‘Inside TikTok: A culture clash where US views about censorship often were overridden by the Chinese bosses‘ is the Post’s headline, which is exactly the issue that’s been sparking calls by US politicians for a […]

As a platform, TikTok continues to generate strong opinions within the music industry regarding what kind of licensing deals it needs, and how much it could or should be paying rightsholders. But it’s also generating a lot of interest and activity from the marketing teams working with artists. It’s certainly not the first platform to […]

There is no suggestion that Pandora or TikTok are knowingly funding a TV-piracy service called TeaTV. But ads for these and other legitimate digital services have been found within that website, in an investigation published by CNBC. “The online service offers a wide swath of pirated movies from major networks such as HBO and streaming services […]

Lead: Lil Nas X might have broken on TikTok but it was his deft use of multiple remixes (and collaborations) that kept ‘Old Town Road’ in the air throughout most of 2019. He claims he has 25 remixes of follow-up track ‘Panini’ ready to go, although this might prove to be the most high-profile case […]

MBW has an interview with Timothy Armoo, founder and CEO of Fanbytes, where he talks about the TikTok campaign for Decca-signed act Aurora based around her track ‘The River’ which was about sending out “a positive message promoting mental health awareness”. For the #youcancrychallenge, they focused on 13 well-known TikTok users to get things rolling by […]

Social brand Flighthouse has reached a new milestone with its TikTok channel: it now has more than 20 million followers. The company says that its recent growth has been fuelled by its decision to start producing its own original videos (rather than just reposting other people’s content), with the channel having added more than two million […]

UK-based artist Ashnikko is having a moment in the spotlight with a track called ‘Stupid’. Featuring ‘Yung Baby Tate’, the song is currently perched in second spot in Spotify’s Global Viral 50 chart, with 4.6m streams so far on that service. Its ‘official audio’ version on YouTube is about to cross 1m views, although an unofficial lyric-video uploaded […]

Next year’s US presidential election promises to be a bumper pay-day for ad-supported digital services of all kinds, music included. Certainly Pandora and Spotify will be angling for the audio budgets of the candidates and the activist groups supporting them in the US. TikTok? Not so much. Well, not at all, in fact. “We have […]

Lead: Sony Music India artist Badshah claimed to have broken the 24-hour record on YouTube for 75m plays of his track ‘Paagal’ in July. Then people started asking questions. It eventually emerged that the track’s success had been boosted by TrueView ads before and during other YouTube videos, all of which counted toward the opening […]

Leaked audio from an internal Facebook meeting where CEO Mark Zuckerberg answered questions from staff has been making headlines – mainly around his promise of a “fight” if politicians try to break his company up. But for Music Ally’s purposes, Zuckerberg’s comments on TikTok are also interesting. “TikTok… is really the first consumer internet product built […]

At the time of writing, it’s 19 hours since Big Hit Entertainment’s official Twitter profile for BTS made this announcement: “#BTS TikTok Channel Open!”. 19 hours later, BTS’ TikTok account is being followed by 2.2 million people. Their two posts so far have 2.9m and 1.9m likes respectively. BTS are the latest prominent artist to join TikTok with […]

TikTok and its parent company Bytedance’s licensing negotiations with music rightsholders continue, as does its dispute with licensing hub ICE in the UK, which has been taken to the country’s copyright tribunal. Yet alongside all this, TikTok continues to make its presence felt as a platform for music discovery and marketing campaigns. It’s no surprise […]

Lead: TikTok is  an essential consideration for artist marketing in 2019, particularly for pop acts. But for all the strategies and careful coordination, the best things on the app are often those that blindside everyone. We spotlight the best recent uses of music (and surprise catalogue reappearances) on TikTok in recent months and also look […]

If TikTok is going to pay sizeable royalties to music rightsholders at some point, it’s going to need sizeable revenues, with advertising likely to loom large. So, AdWeek’s report on the company’s plans should make interesting reading for the music industry. “A trove of newly discovered developer documents reveal the platform has rolled out a native audience […]

Since the earliest days of people becoming famous on YouTube, there’s been intent debate about how the platform’s recommendation algorithm works and, as a follow-on, how to game that algorithm to get more views. It’s the same for any big digital service, of course. And now TikTok is no different. Vice has a good feature […]

TikTok’s latest headache? It’s the latest platform to be targeted by scammers, attracted by its sharp growth in users. Cybersecurity firm Tenable has published a blog post outlining a scam involving ‘adult-dating’ services. “These profiles feature stolen videos from sources like Instagram and Snapchat, featuring women dancing, posing in bikinis, working out or just going about their […]

There’s a healthy debate about the extent to which labels can make a track ‘go viral’ on TikTok, versus simply piling in to capitalise on the effect when this happens organically. Agency The Influencer Marketing Factory has published an interesting case study that falls in to the former category, however. It was hired by Universal […]

The launch of a smartphone app for fans to create and share their own videos with Ed Sheeran’s music (legally!) forming the soundtrack should be big news. But it seems that the Ed No. 6 app is only available in Australia for now. It’s been launched by Warner Music Australia for Android and iOS smartphones, with […]

TikTok has referred licensing hub ICE and its three founders – PRS for Music, GEMA and STIM – to the UK’s Copyright Tribunal, in a dispute over licensing terms. The social app will have some expert help in its corner, it turns out. “Exciting times ahead in a truly inspiring company! Thank you TikTok / […]

TikTok is currently one of the most popular social apps globally, and it’s making plenty of waves in the music industry, from playing an early role in making ‘Old Town Road’ a hit and becoming an exciting platform for music marketing campaigns, to sparking copyright arguments with collecting societies and speculation about its licensing talks […]

Ed Sheeran is big for streams, sales, socials, concert audiences… and now he’s big on TikTok too. To be specific, Sheeran has launched a challenge on that social app for his latest track, the Khalid-featuring ‘Beautiful People’. Fans are being invited to upload videos celebrating the beautiful people in their lives, using the hashtag #BeautifulPeople […]

Yesterday, Music Ally broke the news that social app TikTok has referred three collecting societies – PRS for Music, STIM and GEMA – and their joint-venture licensing hub ICE to the UK’s Copyright Tribunal, in a dispute over music-licensing terms. ICE issued a statement yesterday on the case, but this morning TikTok has also sent […]

Social app TikTok is set for a battle with three European collecting societies and their joint venture, via the medium of the UK’s Copyright Tribunal. That’s the body that resolves copyright-related commercial-licensing disputes in the UK. Copyright Tribunal Ref 132/19 will be of intense interest to the music industry, then. “Notice is hereby given of a reference […]

Ed Newton-Rex was the founder and CEO of Jukedeck, one of the first startups to develop a product for AI-generated music. We say ‘was’ because since April 2019, he has been working for TikTok’s parent company Bytedance as director of its AI Lab, according to his recently-updated LinkedIn profile. That would explain recent rumours that […]

YouTube and TikTok (among other digital services) will have been put on notice by an announcement this week by the US Federal Trade Commission about children’s privacy regulations. The COPPA rule was first implemented in the US in 2000, and concerns how websites and digital services handle personal information from children aged under 13. Now […]

We’re all familiar with the tale of how TikTok helped ‘Old Town Road’ become a big hit in its initial version. Now there’s a new case study from the buzzy social app. Billboard has the story of how a 2015 track called ‘Dissolve’ by artist Absofacto (aka Jonathan Visger) blew up on TikTok early in 2019, […]

Thanks to Apple’s official response to Spotify’s complaint to the European Commission, we know that around 680,000 of the latter company’s subscribers are paying their monthly fees through the iOS in-app purchases system. But what about the wider apps economy? Analytics firm SensorTower has put out its latest figures on how that’s growing, and which apps are benefitting from […]

Lead: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half,” is a quote commonly attributed to Philadelphian retailer John Wanamaker in the 1800s and it has haunted the advertising and marketing worlds ever since. Spending money and hoping for a consumer reaction previously involved stacking up a […]

2019 has brought some bumps to TikTok’s progress in India, including a brief removal of its app from Google and Apple’s app stores in April. However, the social video app is now firing on all cylinders again in India, telling the Economic Times that it has 200 million users in the country, of which 120 million are […]

There were some fun panels at the Midem conference yesterday, including an appearance from musician TheFatRat, the first signing to Universal Music and ESL’s Enter Records label. “I don’t see that I have to please two companies. I see that two companies have to please me! Which I think is a great thing. I see […]

Bad news, record labels hoping to create the next ‘Old Town Road’ sized hit by making a song ‘go viral’ on social app TikTok. It’s easier said than done. “To really make stuff go on TikTok requires a lot of understanding. We tell labels all the time: you can’t just take a song and throw […]

New details have emerged on TikTok’s parent company Bytedance’s plans to launch its own music-streaming service. Bloomberg reports that the new service will launch this autumn “in a handful of territories, mostly poorer countries where paid services have yet to garner large audiences”. The countries aren’t named, but one clue comes from the news that Bytedance has […]

TikTok may be taking over the western world (in terms of downloads at least, as we reported last week) but its parent company Bytedance has just launched a new app in China. It’s called Feiliao, although TechCrunch reports the English-language version of the name is ‘Flipchat’. “Here are your familiar chat, audio and video calls. In […]

This weekend saw the ‘WISE’ conference take place in Beijing, with a lineup of Chinese and international speakers from the music and media industries. Music Ally was there to report back on some of the discussions relating to our industry: particularly a debate over how or if platforms like TikTok (Douyin in China) plan to […]

Social app TikTok may be at a point in its lifetime where big numbers around its growth are counter-productive – at least in one specific context: licensing negotiations with the music industry. The bigger TikTok gets, the keener rightsholders will be to point out how important music has been to its growth, and why any […]

Musicians who are breaking through should be aware of any skeletons lurking in the cupboard of their past social-media posts, according to Andy Varley from music company Insanity Group. “In a generation where more and more artists are growing up through social media, you might have used Twitter as a conversational playground discussion platform as […]

The new Madonna album, Madame X, is out next month but leads singles ‘Medellín’ and ‘I Rise’ have not exactly set the charts alight. Which will make the set up to the album that little bit trickier. Perhaps as part of an accelerated media campaign, Madonna’s team has been talking to Billboard about the use of new […]

Lead: TikTok is far more than a novelty app for people to whip up memes that have a shorter shelf life than a carton of milk. It is now breaking acts and songs in a way that other platforms cannot. We look at what the music industry is doing to capitalise on its phenomenal growth […]

Google and Apple removed social app TikTok from their app stores in India last week, but it will now be returning to the stores, after the state court in Tamil Nadu overturned its ban. This, in turn, has spurred India’s federal government to tell Google and Apple that they can make the app available again. […]

Lead: what digital marketing trends are most underrated or simply misunderstood in 2019? That’s the question we put to the music marketing community and got them to hold forth on the subject. This resulted in a lot of ideas and a lot of new paths for marketing this year and beyond. Campaigns: TikTok goes all […]

Social app TikTok hasn’t been blocked in India: people who’ve downloaded the app there are still using it. But is *has* been removed from Apple and Google’s app stores, meaning that new downloads are currently barred from those official sources. The news is a setback for TikTok in what’s become one of its biggest markets. […]

In yesterday’s bulletin, we covered the arrival of Spotlight, a new initiative on TikTok designed to help break new acts from South Korea and Japan on the short-form video platform. We wondered then if royalties were being paid on music used this way and what rightsholders would make of it all. We didn’t have to […]

TikTok, the short-form video app that has been downloaded over 1bn times to make it the new centre of gravity in the meme world, is looking to court new acts and help break them on the platform. Its new Spotlight feature allows artists to digitally audition for the company and the successful ones will be put in […]

The challenge of levering children off their favourite app is one being grappled with by parents across the world, whether it’s YouTube, Fortnite, TikTok or Roblox. Now the Chinese government is introducing regulations that will crack down on one particular sector: ‘short-video’ apps including TikTok’s Chinese version Douyin and rival Kuaishou. “From June, all such […]

Social app TikTok is under a *lot* of scrutiny in 2019 over the younger end of its community. In February, the company agreed to pay $5.7m in a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission over violations of children’s privacy laws, before blocking access to its app for children aged under 13 in the US. Now the company is […]

The recent $5.7m settlement between TikTok and the US Federal Trade Commission was the biggest ever fine in a child-privacy case. But the amount pales next to the amount TikTok’s parent company Bytedance lost in 2018, according to a report by tech site The Information. It claims that Bytedance’s losses were $1.2bn last year, after making […]

Early on in our coverage social-video app Musical.ly, we warned that its large audience of pre-teens represented a big risk for the company, in terms of staying on the right side of children’s privacy legislation like COPPA in the US. Yesterday, that particular hammer dropped – on TikTok, whose parent company Bytedance acquired Musical.ly before […]

Pitchfork spares no punches in its profile of social-video app TikTok, drawing an unflattering comparison between the value of its parent company Bytedance, and the level of royalties being paid to musicians for use of their work. That said, a tale does emerge of viral TikTok videos sparking streams of music on YouTube and other platforms […]

Social apps from overseas, particularly China, have been dominating the upper reaches of app stores in India. Now the government is responding, with new regulations aimed at ‘intermediary’ apps that get their content from users. The Financial Times reported that any such apps with more than five million users in India ‘need to set up […]

Will children ever tire of YouTube? Surely not! Yet that’s the suggestion being made in a new report published by research firm Kids Insights, which is out today. “According to our data across all ages 4-18 the number of children spending time each day watching YouTube has declined from 61% to 51% in a persistent […]

Lead: While Netflix viewers are currently obsessing over Marie Kondo and her rules on de-cluttering the home (instructing viewers to only hold onto the things that “spark joy”), a different approach needs to happen in digital marketing. Rather than binning everything but the essentials, archivists and markets should be retaining as much as they can […]

There may be trouble brewing for TikTok and the other ‘short-video’ apps that have proven so popular in China over the last year. The Financial Times reported on a new set of industry guidelines, directed by the Chinese government, which will hold these apps responsible for all content posted by their users. Examples of content […]

Many people in the music industry are trying to get a handle on social-video app TikTok: particularly how young people are using it, and what kind of culture is growing around their shared clips. If you’re one of those people, New York magazine’s exploration of TikTok is well worth a read – especially because it […]

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Spotify are among the apps that have launched ‘lite’ versions aimed mainly at markets where mobile networks are slower, and/or where mobile data is more expensive. Now social-video app TikTok has quietly followed suit, launching a pair of ‘Lite’ apps (one with a lower-case ‘l’ in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and other […]