TikTok has profoundly changed the way we listen to music. Seven years after its launch, the platform has become the number one source of musical discovery among young people. This has prompted its parent company, ByteDance, to innovate by launching its own music streaming service in several countries.

The new streaming service is called TikTok Music. It arrived on July 6 in Brazil and Indonesia, and more recently in Australia, Mexico and Singapore. While users in Brazil and Indonesia can access the service in return for a subscription fee, those in Australia, Mexico and Singapore cannot, since TikTok Music has been launched in these territories in closed beta form, according to Music Business Worldwide. In other words, for the time being, it is available only to a limited number of testers, who benefit from a free three-month trial period of access.

Whether volunteers or otherwise, users of TikTok Music can enjoy a "full catalog of music from thousands of labels and artists," including those signed to Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music. What's more, they can listen to the most viral songs on TikTok in their entirety, discover personalized music recommendations and create collaborative playlists with their friends. The streaming service also offers the ability to find songs by lyrics, or to recognize any piece of music, almost anywhere, just like Shazam.

TikTok Music offers a number of features similar to those found on social networks, including the ability to write comments or get in touch with other music lovers. This makes it a veritable "social music streaming service," according to a TikTok press release cited by several industry websites.

Innovating for domination

For the moment, the Chinese group has not stated whether TikTok Music will be rolled out elsewhere in the world, but it's safe to assume that this will be the case in the coming months. The choice to test this new streaming service in Australia is particularly interesting, since TikTok conducted a music-themed experiment there in February. The social network temporarily restricted access to music for some Australian users of its service, reports Bloomberg. They could only use a limited catalog of tracks for their videos, while several tracks had been cut from those already posted.

This experiment provoked the ire of the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). "It is frustrating to see TikTok deliberately disrupt Australians’ user and creator experience in an attempt to downplay the significance of music on its platform," ARIA CEO Annabelle Herd said in a statement at the time.

The launch of TikTok Music comes just days after that of Ripple, an application that ByteDance describes as a tool for "music creation, composition and audio editing." It relies on a subtle set of algorithms to help its users design and create, from A to Z, the next track to sweep the charts or the TikTok social network. Proof, if proof were needed, that ByteDance is ready to spare no expense when it comes to nurturing its creative ecosystem and consolidating its position in the music industry.

 - AFP Relaxnews