Streaming wars: Apple Music and Spotify get a rival in the face of TikTok Music

Four years after it was first gossiped about, TikTok is finally ready to challenge Apple Music and Spotify. ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, is launching its take on the audio streaming services, and they call it TikTok Music (via 9to5Mac).

Not the most clever naming, but originality is the least of concerns for the headquarters at Cupertino and Stockholm (Spotify is Swedish-made). If TikTok manages to hook even a slight fraction of its 1.67 billion users (out of which 1.06 billion are active monthly) and have them subscribe to the new service, trouble is on the horizon for Apple and Spotify. More on the western companies' stats and hopes later.

You may not have heard about TikTok Music until now, but that’s completely normal. ‘Only’ about half a billion people in the world may try TikTok Music today if they wish to. If you don’t live in Brazil or Indonesia, where TikTok Music is now exclusively available, you’re in for a disappointment and an undefined waiting period. Plans for a US release have not been made official. Taking into account the worsening by the day US-China relationships, it’s not unreasonable to say it will be long before this happens.

They have your eyes, now they want your ears

Roughly speaking, there are two types of music listeners today. One type is still clinging to the idea of possessing music: albums that come in the form of CDs, flash drives, mp3/FLAC files, vinyl records, etc. The other type is catching tunes via the subscription-based model of Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, etc. Of course, listeners from the second group are far more in terms of sheer numbers, which is why there are so many platforms available.

Since there is an abundance of music streaming services today, why take notice of yet another? TikTok Music offers features that might appeal to users. The new service will let users sync TikTok Music with their existing TikTok accounts. The catalog consists of big record companies’ hits, including Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music. TikTok Music will allow subscribers to download tracks for offline listening sessions, discover music recommendations that are personalized to their music taste, plus access lyrics in real time.

But wait, there’s more: in TikTok Music, one could play full versions of viral TikTok songs used in popular videos. The options to create collaborative playlists with friends, import your music library and find songs via lyrics search are also present. The service also adds a feature that can identify music that you’re listening to (basically, TikTok’s own Shazam-like feature). TikTok Music is trying to socialize and introduce music lovers to one another – it allows users to express comments and thoughts on the tracks in the catalog.

What’s the price of TikTok Music? Is it free?

TikTok Music is not free and there isn't an option for a free membership. However, there’s the option for a one-month free trial. Brazilian users are to be charged $3.49 monthly for a subscription, which isn’t different from Apple Music’s fee in the country. Like most other services, music streamers have to adjust prices to each market (in the US, for example, Apple Music costs $10.99/month). In Indonesia the pricing model is a mini-mess: $3.25 per month for iOS users; for Android users: $2.96 a month for the first year, then $3.25 afterwards.

Similar pricing to the existing options like Apple Music and Spotify means good news for the western companies. They are not lowering their guard, though. Quite the opposite. Since 2021, Spotify has been talking about releasing a TikTok-like video feed, and in March 2023, they rolled it out.