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TikTok has become a go-to platform for discovering new music.
Record labels, music marketers, artists, and other creators are all flooding the app with songs.
Here’s a full breakdown of Insider’s recent coverage on TikTok’s impact on the music industry.
TikTok is an essential promotional tool for music artists and record labels.
Songs can rise up organically on the app even if they’ve been outside the mainstream for decades. Marketers can also hire influencers to help a song take off, sparking a wave of user-generated posts from their fans. And some artists even set up private listening sessions with TikTok influencers in the hope that it will help new songs gain steam on the app.
The company has a global team that works with artists and record labels, negotiates licensing deals with rights holders, and builds new ways for TikTok to convert its cultural influence into recurring revenue. The company launched in 2022 a song-distribution platform called SoundOn, and may eventually roll out its own music streaming service, a trademark filing from its parent company ByteDance suggests.
“TikTok has really become a critical part of artist storytelling,” Kristen Bender, SVP of digital strategy and business development at Universal Music Group, told Insider during a 2021 webinar on TikTok’s impact on the music industry. “Our labels have been extremely leaned into the platform.”
Watch a full replay of Insider’s webinar on TikTok’s impact on the music industry, featuring execs from TikTok, Universal Music Group, and UnitedMasters
For some, the hyper-focus on TikTok can be draining. Artists like Halsey and Charli XCX have posted videos expressing frustration at being asked to make TikToks by their labels. One performer, the artist Taylor Upsahl, told Insider it can be “really stressful” to be expected to balance social promotion with touring and writing and recording new music.
And for record labels and other rights holders, TikTok’s impact on music can be frustrating, particularly when the company asserts its influence as leverage during licensing negotiations.
“The argument from the labels’ position is that TikTok wouldn’t have an app without music because that’s what people are primarily using in their videos,” Tatiana Cirisano, a music industry analyst and consultant at the research firm MIDiA Research, told Insider. “The argument from TikTok’s side is TikTok is now so important to the music industry that they can’t afford …read more
Source:: Business Insider