TikTok to shut down its music streaming business in November

TIKTOK plans to discontinue its music service in November, ending a years-long experiment to compete with Spotify Technology and Apple.

TikTok Music will go offline on Nov 28 and customer data will be deleted, the music division said in a post on its website. Users were told to transfer playlists to other services no later than Oct 28.

Instead of competing with music streaming services, TikTok will drive users to them via its “Add To Music App” feature, the company said in a statement on Tuesday (Sep 24). The feature, which was introduced last year, lets users save tracks they like on TikTok to playlists on partner services such as Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon.

ByteDance, TikTok’s owner, created the music service to capitalise on the app’s power and popularity with music fans. TikTok videos have been credited with the rise of hit songs and new artists, and have led to clashes with record labels which have demanded higher payments for using their clips.

Earlier this year, Universal Music Group had a months-long standoff that saw performers including Drake and Rihanna pulled from the network.

The music app, originally called Resso, was launched initially in 2019, in a bet that the company could funnel TikTok users into a new standalone music service. It was available in Brazil, Indonesia, Australia, Mexico, and Singapore. BLOOMBERG