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MBW Reacts is a series of analytical commentaries from Music Business Worldwide written in response to major recent entertainment events or news stories. Only MBW+ subscribers have unlimited access to these articles.
Let’s be honest: The sudden end of TikTok Music is a bit of an anti-climax.
When it first arrived as a new Spotify challenger — and a potential deep well of subscription revenues in emerging markets — the app was greeted with plenty of music biz buzz.
But TikTok Music’s brief existence has arguably been a damp squib.
As first reported by MBW last week, the TikTok Music app will stop working on November 28 in the five regions where it’s currently live: Indonesia, Brazil, Australia, Singapore and Mexico.
TikTok says the closure was informed by its agnostic approach to the music streaming market, and its plans to direct more resources towards its ‘Add To Music App’ feature, which pushes users to third-party music apps like Spotify.
Indeed, Spotify likely welcomed TikTok’s decision with a sigh of relief, especially in high-growth recorded music markets such as Brazil. Deutsche Bank said last week that TikTok Music’s closure was “a clear positive” for SPOT.
Behind the scenes, however, there’s evidence that ByteDance and TikTok have been making some intriguing moves – and investments – in the music space over the past few months… all outside of the TikTok Music ecosystem.
The company’s subscription music streaming journey ends on November 28, but TikTok’s broader plans in music are only just getting started.
Here are three things we’ve spotted that might just give us a solid clue about where TikTok’s relationship with the music business could be headed in the future…
1. TikTok has appointed a Head of Global Music Content Strategy & Investments… and he’s recruiting for execs with private equity experience.
In June, MBW broke the news that TikTok is moving into the competitive music M&A market and plans to acquire and invest in music rights and music companies.
We learned that TikTok is forming an in-house Music Content Investment Team based in Los Angeles, New York, and San Jose, focusing on “partnership or acquisition opportunities in the music content space on a global level”.
As we noted a few months ago, it’s telling that the company looking is looking for candidates with experience in the world of investment banking and private equity.
It now appears that TikTok has appointed a Head of Global Music Content Strategy & Investments who is leading the recruitment drive for TikTok’s Music Content Investment Team.
“Liu and TikTok are still hiring for Music Content Investment Leads and Music Content Investment Managers in L.A., San Jose and New York with experience at an investment bank, management consulting firm, or private equity firm.”
According to LinkedIn, the person recently appointed to that role is a San Francisco-based executive named Kenneth Liu.
Liu’s LinkedIn profile reveals that he was formerly the Operations Lead of E-commerce & Council Member of TikTok Indonesia.
Prior to that, he worked at ride-hailing app DiDi in Sub-Saharan Africa, as an Investment Manager of at financial services firm Macquarie Group. He also served in roles at private equity giants EQT Group and Morgan Stanley.
Liu and TikTok are still hiring for Music Content Investment Leads and Music Content Investment Managers in L.A., San Jose and New York with experience at an investment bank, management consulting firm, or private equity firm.
2. TikTok says it that aspires “to become the most influential music platform for the next generation of music enthusiasts…”
If you want to try to figure out what a company is building, look at who it’s trying to hire to build it. And then look at what it’s pitching to that executive talent.
TikTok isn’t only recruiting for execs to join its Music Content Investment Team, it appears to be hiring for around 100 music-related roles currently advertised on its careers site.
One of those roles is for a Los Angeles-based ‘Product Manager, Music Copyright’. According to the job description, this person will join TikTok’s Music Content Center team.
Per the ad, the Music Content Center team “is responsible for all things music across [TikTok’s] global products & businesses”.
The job description also includes an interesting bit of insight into TikTok’s aspirations in music: “We aspire to become the most influential music platform for the next generation of music enthusiasts to express themselves and connect.”
“We aspire to become the most influential music platform for the next generation of music enthusiasts to express themselves and connect.”
TikTok
TikTok says that this person will be responsible for product design for its “music copyright platform and publishing rights management system”.
They will also “collaborate with R&D, design, business development, and operations teams to implement advanced platform features, conduct training for internal clients and music partners, and refine product features”.
3. did you know Tiktok has a tool called ‘Music Factory’ that can generate AI-spawned music?
MBW has written extensively about TikTok and parent company ByteDance’s activities in the AI music field.
In March, for example, MBW uncovered a series of US patents and trademark applications filed by a mysterious ByteDance affiliate, called Lemon Inc.
We also published a widely shared report in March about the extensive research conducted by ByteDance’s Speech, Audio & Music Intelligence (SAMI) team in the field of AI music.
One of those research projects describes a generative model called MeLoDy that was trained, according to ByteDance’s SAMI researchers, on 257,000 hours of music (read the paper here) that came from 6.4 million audio files.
We know that ByteDance has launched a machine-learning-driven music-making app called Mawf in the past couple of years, as well as Ripple – an AI-powered music-making app that can turn a hummed melody into a song.
More recently, TikTok has been testing an AI Song feature that uses a large language model to power lyric generation.
But we’ve spotted another interesting feature that sits within the Video Editor section of the TikTok for Business “Creative Center”.
TikTok’s Video Editor lets users add royalty-free music to their videos. It also features a tool called ‘Music Factory‘, which appears to be able to generate music “that matches the style and mood” of a video.
TikTok calls its TikTok For Business Creative Center “a free, public home to an ever-growing suite of creative resources where you can discover the latest trends, ad examples, best practices, and tools to create effective TikTok ads”.
The TikTok For Business Creative Center also features TikTok Symphony, the platform’s recently launched suite of creative solutions powered by generative AI, but ‘Music Factory’ appears to be a separate feature.
TikTok displays the following AI content disclaimer within its Creative Center: “AI generated content is generated automatically based on information provided by you.”
“TikTok does not make any promises or guarantees regarding the content generated by AI, and does not endorse, sponsor, or approve this content. It is solely your decision whether to utilize and/or publish content created using AI products in ads or other materials.”
Tiktok disclaimer displayed in the creative center
It adds: “TikTok does not make any promises or guarantees regarding the content generated by AI, and does not endorse, sponsor, or approve this content. It is solely your decision whether to utilize and/or publish content created using AI products in ads or other materials.
“You are solely responsible for any content created using AI, ensuring that such content is accurate and complies with applicable laws and regulations. The information you submit will be shared with our third-party service provider to generate the content created by AI. Please do not share any personal, sensitive, or confidential information.”
While TikTok’s ‘Music Factory’ is clearly intended to be a creative tool for business users, the existence of a feature within the TikTok ecosystem that can generate music based on the visuals of a video is an interesting development, and we can’t help but wonder if similar tools might be rolled out to all users in the future.
MBW has been discussing the hypothetical potential for TikTok and other services to stuff their catalogs with AI-made music – diluting the market share of traditional rightsholders – for some time.
Following Universal Music Group‘s public fallout with TikTok earlier this year, Universal Music Publishing Group, in a statement issued to its songwriters in February, also raised the specter of TikTok potentially using AI music to push down the market share (and therefore the earnings potential) of copyrighted/licensed music on the platform.
However, those concerns appear to have been resolved in May, when Universal Music Group and TikTok struck a licensing deal that saw the return of UMG’s catalog of ~4 million songs and ~3 million recordings to TikTok.
The companies said that they would work together “to ensure AI development across the music industry will protect human artistry and the economics that flow to those artists and songwriters”.
TikTok also committed to working with UMG to remove unauthorized AI-generated music from the platform, as well as tools to improve artist and songwriter attribution.Music Business Worldwide
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