According to trademarks found by TechCrunch that have been filed in multiple countries, ByteDance may be preparing for a global launch of the TikTok music service. The China-based conglomerate has registered the TikTok Music trademark in countries including the UK, Singapore, New Zealand, Mexico, Malaysia and Costa Rica.
This comes after a Business Insider report last week pointed to a “TikTok Music” trademark application in the US. ByteDance had also registered another trademark in Australia under a similar name.
All of these trademark applications contain similar text about the functionality of the application to listen to music, create playlists, comment on songs and participate in karaoke.
The trademark filing states that it “would allow users to buy, play, share, download, create their playlists, lyrics, quotes, recommend, share, include photos as covers, music, songs, albums, lyrics, quotes.” , edit and upload playlists, comment on music, songs and albums.”
ByteDance already operates a music streaming service called Resso in India, Brazil, and Indonesia, and a former ByteDance employee told us that he had previously considered bringing that service to more markets, dubbed “TikTok Music.” In particular, launches in mature markets such as the UK and Australia have been considered, the source said.
Resso has identical features to those above, with TikTok-like vertical scrolling to cycle through songs, the ability to change cover photos for playlists, lyrics displayed on the lock screen, and comments on songs and albums.
Since its launch in 2020, Resso has made solid strides in its existing markets, mobile data shows. According to analytics firm Sensor Tower, the company saw 42.3 million downloads from the App Store and Google Play from January to May this year — a 19% year-over-year growth for the same period. The music streaming app also had a total of 184 million lifetime downloads.
TikTok, meanwhile, has had a major impact on the music industry as many hits have been fueled by various viral videos on the platform. A report released by the company last year suggested that 175 songs that were trending on the short-video platform landed on the Billboard 100 chart. Additionally, a recent report by a UK music investor found that songs popular on TikTok drive additional views on YouTube and streams on other music streaming platforms like Spotify. Record labels are also benefiting from the success of TikTok in the music sector. TikTok reportedly paid $179 million to music rights holders in 2021.
ByteDance would want to grab all that traffic and streaming money from its own music service and its recently launched music marketing and distribution platform, SoundOn. Last week, the company rolled out a pre-release feature to allow artists to “leak” their songs to TikTok audiences ahead of the official release.
The launch of TikTok Music would mean an additional revenue stream for ByteDance and a complete music solution service that can offer artists solutions to release their songs via SoundOn, market them on TikTok and get people to contribute entire songs to TikTok Music/Resso Listen. This service would compete head-to-head with music streaming giants like Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, and Pandora.
We contacted ByteDance for a comment.
