TikTok Music app to compete with Apple and Spotify

Considering how intertwined music discovery is with TikTok, it wouldn't be surprising if the company launched its music streaming app. Well, the patent filings discovered by Insider suggest that TikTok is working on just that. TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, filed a trademark application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for "TikTok Music" in May. According to the presentation, the service would allow users to buy, play, share and download music. It also allows users to create, share, and recommend playlists, comment on music, and stream live audio and video. ByteDance already applied for a "TikTok Music" trademark in Australia last November.

ByteDance already has experience with streaming music. In 2020, ByteDance launched a music streaming app, Resso, in India, Brazil, and Indonesia. Resso has similar features described in the "TikTok Music" archive, such as creating playlists, sharing songs on social media, and interacting with the app's community. ByteDance even uses TikTok to bring existing users to Resso. According to a report by The Information, the TikTok app in Brazil has a button that redirects users to Resso so they can listen to the full version of a song they're interested in, a move that helps keep users inside the ByteDance ecosystem.

The Information also reports that Resso had more than 40 million monthly users in India, Brazil, and Indonesia as of November 2021, which is likely to grow. Earlier this year, an Insider report revealed that Resso's monthly active users increased 304 per cent between January 2021 and January 2022 in India, compared to Spotify's 38 per cent growth in the country during the same period.

It's unclear if ByteDance plans to develop a music streaming app based on the Resso framework or come up with something else entirely. However, just as TikTok had a profound impact on how social media sites operate, it's possible that music streaming apps with links to TikTok could change the music streaming industry, forcing services to adapt.