State Champ Radio TikTok Expands New Music Streaming Service to Mexico, Australia & Singapore
Written by djfrosty on July 18, 2023
Shortly after its initial official launch, TikTok Music is already in expansion mode.
The new app, which is a full-catalog subscription music streaming service that ties into a user’s TikTok account, is launching in three additional countries: Mexico, Australia and Singapore, the company announced today (July 18). The announcement comes just two weeks after the company announced the creation of TikTok Music, with its initial availability limited to Brazil and Indonesia.
The launch in the three new countries will initially be in closed beta, with users being invited to try the service with a three-month trial after downloading the app.
“TikTok Music is a new kind of music service that combines the power of music discovery on TikTok with a music streaming service offering millions of tracks from thousands of artists,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement. “We are now beta testing TikTok Music in Australia, Mexico [and] Singapore, and will have more news to share on the launch of TikTok Music in the coming months.”
TikTok Music grew out of, and is replacing, TikTok’s initial foray into music streaming, which it called Resso and which had been operating in India and Indonesia since March 2020, before later expanding into Brazil. That service was initially a free, ad-supported streamer before TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, announced in May that it would become subscription-only. Resso’s availability in Indonesia and Brazil is sunsetting on Sept. 5.
The announcement caps a big day for TikTok, which also unveiled a major new licensing partnership with Warner Music Group (WMG) allowing the company’s music to be used on the main app as well as in its commercial library, among other uses, while giving WMG artists greater access to some of TikTok’s tools to reach fans and sell merchandise. TikTok also announced the launch of a new emerging artist program called Elevate to promote artists both on and off the app.
TikTok Music is a significant step in the relationship between the wildly-popular social media app and the music business, which has been contested in recent years but has since begun to thaw with an increased partnership between the sides. Sony, which had pulled its catalog from Resso in recent months, struck a deal to return its catalog to both Resso and TikTok Music, for example. TikTok has also been rolling out tools to help creators, and additionally to help users find artists on the platform. The expansion of its streaming service could be a huge change in the digital service provider landscape, which hasn’t seen a new major player emerge in several years at this point — particularly one with as massive and engaged a user base as TikTok.
