(Hypebot) — TikTok Music is on track to become the first new major competitor to Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music in more than five years, and two new announcements confirm that a major shift in streaming dominance is right around the corner.
Signaling that TikTok parent ByteDance’s plan to take the subscription-only streaming music service global is going to plan, TikTok Music launched today in Australia, Mexico, and Singapore less than two weeks after it debuted in Brazil and Indonesia.
This expansion comes just a day after TikTok announced its first deal with one of the big three music groups: WMG. In addition to global licensing for TikTok Music, the pair announced a “wide-ranging, first-of-its-kind partnership” that also licenses the repertoire of Warner Recorded Music and Warner Chappell Music to TikTok, sister video editing app CapCut, and TikTok’s Commercial Music Library.
A major threat to Spotify
With 1.06 billion active users spread across 154 countries, including 150 million in the US, TikTok has become a major source of music discovery that can propel careers, drive global hits, and can rekindle interest in the decades-old catalog.
While an immediate exodus of users from other streamers to TikTok Music seems unlikely, its launch and the inevitable integrations with TikTok offer a major threat to major music streaming players and increases TikTok’s importance for musicians and label.
While Apple Music and Amazon Music are part of larger ecosystems that disincentive users from switching services and can help them survive new competitors. Spotify is a standalone service and company. That leaves EK and Co. vulnerable and
