TikTok is shaking up its approach to music distribution branch
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What is TikTok’s new strategy for music distribution?
TikTok has always had deep roots in the music industry, but now the short form video platform is switching up its music distribution strategy. For more, we turn to the KCBS Ring Central Newsline and speak with Bloomberg's Alexandra Levine. Alexandra, thanks very much for the time. OK, how does music distribution work on TikTok now and what's the big change?
Well, music has really been core to TikTok's DNA since the very beginning. The app started as Musical.ly in its early days. For years, it was known as a dance app. Its logo has always been a bright, bubbly music note.
How is TikTok’s shift away from record‑label partnerships affecting artists?
But in the last six months to a year, we've really started to see a shift in its approach to music and its relationship with the music industry, with TikTok beginning to slowly deprioritize relationships with record labels.
What does that mean? I mean, who's being cut out here? Is it the record labels and going directly to the artist?
So importantly, TikTok does continue to license music from record labels, including some of the world's biggest. So the work together does continue. But what we're seeing is that TikTok is really starting to invest more in projects that give TikTok more control over the music business. They are...
What is SoundOn and how does it compete with traditional label distribution?
really investing more in internal projects that actually compete directly with labels. So one example is that TikTok is prioritizing its own music distribution arm, which is called SoundOn, that competes directly with the primary service that labels have been offering, which is ensuring artists' music ends up on streaming services and also helping to market songs on TikTok to the many, many users and many millions of eyeballs that would be seeing videos on their feed that have music you know, the artist music as the backdrop.
Okay. So this sounds like it's going to benefit smaller music artists, people who are trying to break in because they're getting this kind of exposure without having to go through the record label.
Well, there's actually more concern that this is going to, that this is going to hurt smaller midsize and indie artists. Even though, you know, even though they are deprioritizing their relationships with record labels on the whole, At the end of the day, the artists that have the weight and the resources of these record labels are still the ones that are going to have massive companies behind them pouring marketing dollars into trying to get their music to break out there.
Will TikTok’s changes help or hurt smaller and indie musicians?
So there is concern, just in speaking to folks who are familiar with the company strategy, as well as people who, executives from across the industry, label marketers, etc., that this is, at the end of the day, going to continue to boost the top echelon of artists. and actually leave behind some of the smaller emerging artists that are hoping to break out on the platform.
Is there anything that the small or medium artists can do about this?
Well, I think importantly, we hear that even though there are these concerns, most small, medium, small and medium-sized artists, the indies, as well as all the bigs, they all believe that TikTok is still an outsized force that is too important to ignore when it comes to music. So I don't think that this means that smaller and mid-sized or indie artists are going to, you know, flee the platform and decide that it's not a place where they can build a fan base, grow an audience, get their music out there to the world. But I think that increasingly, even though the even though we'll see folks stay on the platform, I think increasingly there's a feeling like there's no control of the narrative, like trying to blow up on the platform is really just a case of roulette and sort of throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks.
And I think that that is an issue that it's not just the smaller and mid-tier artists are grappling with, it's also the bigs with all the resources behind them.
One last thing. So TikTok, then it feels like they're kind of expanding. They're just stretching out.
What internal cuts and shake‑ups has TikTok’s music division experienced?
Well, I guess the music division is actually contracting. So we've seen that in the last roughly six months to year, there have been an enormous number of cuts across the company, as with many other tech companies as well.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is TikTok’s new strategy for music distribution?
0:00–0:38
2
How is TikTok’s shift away from record‑label partnerships affecting artists?
0:38–1:19
3
What is SoundOn and how does it compete with traditional label distribution?
1:19–2:28
4
Will TikTok’s changes help or hurt smaller and indie musicians?
2:28–4:06
5
What internal cuts and shake‑ups has TikTok’s music division experienced?
4:06–5:20
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from KCBS Bloomberg Tech and Business Report
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