ByteDance may be preparing for a global launch of its TikTok Music service, according to registered trademarks in several countries discovered by TechCrunch. The China-based conglomerate has trademarked TikTok Music in countries like United Kingdom, Singapore, New Zealand, Mexico, Malaysiaand Costa Rica.
This comes after a Business Insider report last week that points to “TikTok Music” trademark application in the US. ByteDance has also registered another trademark in Australia under a similar name.
All of these trademark applications include similar text regarding the app’s functionality for listening to music, creating playlists, commenting on songs, and participating in karaoke.
The trademarked app says it will allow “users to buy, play, share, download music, songs, albums, lyrics, quotes, create, recommend, share his/her playlists, lyrics, quotes, take, edit and upload photos like the cover of playlists, comment on music, songs and albums.
ByteDance already operates a music streaming service called Reso in India, Brazil and Indonesia, and a former ByteDance employee told us that it had previously considered bringing the service to more markets under the title “TikTok Music.” Specifically, it was considering launching in mature markets such as the United Kingdom and Australia, the source said.
Resso has identical features to those described above, with TikTok-like vertical scrolling to cycle through songs, the ability to change cover photos for playlists, lyrics displayed on the lock screen, and comments for songs and albums.
From its launch in 2020, Resso has seen solid progress in its existing markets, mobile data shows. According to analyst firm Sensor Tower, the company saw 42.3 million downloads from the App Store and Google Play from January to May this year, a 19% year-over-year increase over the same period. The music streaming app also has 184 million lifetime downloads.
Meanwhile, TikTok has made a big impact on the music industry with many hits driven by various viral videos on the platform. A report released by the company last year suggested that 175 songs were popular on the short video platform charted on the Billboard 100. In addition, a recent report published by a UK-based music investor noted that songs that are popular on TikTok lead to additional views on YouTube and streams on other music streaming platforms, such as Spotify. Record labels are also benefiting from TikTok’s success in the music sector. Reports appreciate this TikTok paid $179 million to music rights holders in 2021
ByteDance would like to grab all that traffic and streaming money from its own music service and recently launched music marketing and distribution platform SoundOn. Last week, the company launched pre-release feature so that artists can “leak” their songs to the TikTok audience before the official release.
The launch of TikTok Music would mean an additional revenue stream for ByteDance and a complete music solution service that can offer artists solutions to publish their songs through SoundOn, market them on TikTok and get people to listen to entire songs on TikTok Music /Resso. This service will compete directly with music streaming giants like Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and Pandora.
We’ve reached out to ByteDance for comment.