TikTok is shutting down TikTok Music

Well, this is interesting. A year ago, bets were that TikTok was in the process of creating its own streaming music service. The thinking was that an in-house platform would prevent users from leaving the app for Spotify (or whatever) when they wanted to hear the full version of a song they heard in a video. Made total sense.

TikTok Music was even launched in several territories (Brazil, Mexico, )Australia, Singapore, and Indonesia). It was only a matter of time before TikTok Music spread worldwide, right?

Nope. It’s all being shut down as TikTok wants to focus on a feature called “Add Music to App.” This allows users to create a “save” list of songs they discover via videos and then listen to them on the user’s preferred streamer. TikTok partners specifically with Apple Musi, Amazaon Muisc, and Spotify. That’s enough to extend this “Add to Music” thing to 180 countries.

Here’s a statement:

“We will be closing TikTok Music at the end of November in order to focus on our goal of furthering TikTok’s role in driving even greater music listening and value on music streaming services, for the benefit of artists, songwriters and the industry.”

This move says something about the state and future of streaming music services, but I’m not quite sure what that is. Perhaps it has to do with concerns that the streaming arena is beyond saturated and that subscriber numbers are going down. If that’s the case, TikTok realizes that it’s not just worth the risk of trying to compete with the established players. It’s cheaper just to partner.