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Canada announced Monday it is banning TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices, reflecting widening worries from Western officials over the Chinese-owned video sharing app.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it might be a first step to further action.
“I suspect that as government takes the significant step of telling all federal employees that they can no longer use TikTok on their work phones many Canadians from business to private individuals will reflect on the security of their own data and perhaps make choices,” Trudeau said.
The European Union’s executive branch said last week it has temporarily banned TikTok from phones used by employees as a cybersecurity measure.
The EU’s action follows similar moves in the U.S., where more than half of the states and Congress have banned TikTok from official government devices.
Last week, Canada’s federal privacy watchdog and its provincial counterparts in British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec announced an investigation to delve into whether the app complies with Canadian privacy legislation.
TikTok is wildly popular with young people, but its Chinese ownership has raised fears that Beijing could use it to collect data on Western users or push pro-China narratives and misinformation. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020.
TikTok faces intensifying scrutiny from Europe and America over security and data privacy amid worries that the app could be used to promote pro-Beijing views or sweep up users’ information. It comes as China and the West are locked in a wider tug of war over technology ranging from spy balloons to computer chips.
Canadian Treasury Board President Mona Fortier said the federal government will also block the app from being downloaded on official devices in the future.
Fortier said in statement the Chief Information Officer of Canada determined that it “presents an unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security.”
The app will be removed from Canadian government issued phones on Tuesday.
“On a mobile device, TikTok’s data collection methods provide considerable access to the contents of the phone,” Fortier said.
“While the risks of using this application are clear, we have no evidence at this point that government information has been compromised.”
Recent media reports have also raised concerns about potential Chinese interference in recent Canadian elections, prompting opposition parties to call for a public inquiry into alleged foreign election interference.
“It’s curious that the Government of Canada has moved to block TikTok on government-issued devices—without citing any specific security concern or contacting us with questions—only after similar bans were introduced in the EU and the US,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a email.
The company is always available to discuss the privacy and security of Canadians, the statement said. “Singling out TikTok in this way does nothing to achieve that shared goal,” the email said. “All it does is prevent officials from reaching the public on a platform loved by millions of Canadians.”
What’s TikTok without music? That’s the central question at the heart of debates between major rights holders and the Bytedance-owned social media platform negotiating rates for their content, and a group of Australian users have been pulled into the middle to try to find out.
Earlier this month, it was revealed that that TikTok is running tests in Australia that limits the amount of licensed music some users can encounter on the platform. The test impacts fewer than half of Australia-based accounts, and it doesn’t affect everyone in the same way, according to a person familiar with the situation. The test puts people into multiple cohorts and provides them with different libraries of sounds to use in video creation. So, not everybody in the test will have the same catalog to choose from. Likewise, users in the test cohorts have different encounters with audio. Some people in test cohorts will encounter muted music on other users’ videos. This allows TikTok to compare and measure the different ways people interact with the app.
The results may inform TikTok’s licensing strategy, but evidence that some Australians are unhappy members of the test cohort can be seen on Twitter. “Tiktok really ruining its own app with all this ‘sound removed’ garbage,” one Australian user tweeted last week. Another echoed the sentiment: “wtf is up with tiktok removing like half the sounds??? like i swear ive seen SO many tiktoks where the sound has been removed.”
The risk of upsetting users and creators isn’t lost on TikTok. “We appreciate it’s disappointing if a certain track is unavailable or if a sound is muted on a previous video,” the company said in a statement. “This change will not be in place for long and not all music is affected.” The test will run from a month to a month and a half, according to a source familiar with the situation, meaning it should conclude by mid-March.
Why would TikTok degrade its user experience even in a relatively small market like Australia? A source familiar with the company’s thinking said TikTok is using the experiment to study what is trending, how users are accessing the platform through different entry points and how they are enjoying it. It is not a negotiating tactic, the person said. Nonetheless, the company is gathering the data during a year when most, if not all, of TikTok’s agreements with music rights owners come up for renewal. The source said it is predictable that TikTok would gather this information ahead of high-stakes negotiations, like those ongoing with major labels and other stakeholders.
Around the music industry, there are different interpretations for TikTok’s actions. One explanation is that TikTok is doing what tech companies do all the time: run tests, collect data and analyze the results. That narrative fits with what’s known. Australia, an important yet small and isolated English-speaking market, is a popular place for tech companies — Spotify, Facebook, Google, Tinder and others — to test new products. Much like these other companies, TikTok is an engineering-led company with engineers who want to take data-driven approaches to making decisions on how much time and resources should be invested in projects, building systems and, yes, even licensing rights. Sometimes, as history has shown with most of those other companies, too, a different mindset puts them at odds with creative industries.
“I don’t think they truly understand music at these tech companies,” says a record label executive. “It just doesn’t resonate with them.”
Negotiating tool?
TikTok, of course, has numerous people from the music world on staff: Ole Obermann, global head of music, and Tracy Gardner, head of licensing and partnerships, are former Warner Music Group executives. Jordan Lowy, head of music publishing licensing and partnerships, previously worked at Universal Music Group and Disney Music Group, and dozens if not hundreds of other music industry alums work at TikTok in editorial and artist partnerships. But the company looks and acts like a social media company, not a music company.
A less benign view of the test is that TikTok is looking for a rationale to argue music is not important to the platform – or not as important as labels believe. Annabelle Herd, the CEO of ARIA, the trade body for the Australian record industry, said TikTok “seeks to rationalize cutting artists’ compensation” and “downplay the significance of music on its platform.” Another industry executive believes the test is meant to lower expectations going into discussions with rights holders. “They’re looking to anchor their negotiating position near zero,” says a music industry source.
TikTok has spent years playing up music’s importance to creators, users and artists. “Music is at the heart of the TikTok experience,” Obermann stated in the opening words of the TikTok 2021 Music Report. That year, around 430 songs surpassed 1 billion views, up 200% from the previous year, and over 175 songs that trended that year charted on the Hot 100. In the company’s 2022 year-end report, Obermann reiterated TikTok’s value to artists, saying the platform “continues to unlock real-world opportunities for artists and labels, helping talent to secure record deals, brand collaborations, chart success, or be re-discovered decades later.”
And while the platform has certainly evolved beyond lip-syncing videos – book reviews and finance advice abound, for example – much of the recent news coming out of the company still involves music: StemDrop, an interactive, collaborative songwriting platform led by Max Martin, Syco Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Samsung; a Calvin Harris virtual reality concert; and welcomes to The Rolling Stones and Dolly Parton for joining the platform.
Anecdotally, exactly how important records labels’ music is to TikTok is debatable. Its top three trending songs of 2022 were independent releases, and the No. 1 song, “Sunroof” by Nicky Youre & Dazy, was originally released independently through SoundOn, TikTok’s music distribution business that’s been known to add promotion to music uploaded through its service. In all, only five of the top 10 of 2022 were signed to major labels. Major label music is arguably more important to on-demand streaming platforms and radio stations. By contrast, all the top 10 tracks of Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 and Radio Songs charts were released through major labels.
But major label music is everywhere on TikTok. Lizzo’s “About Damn Time” was the No. 4 trending song of 2022. Pharrell Williams’ “Just a Cloud Away” was No. 5. Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” was No. 10. And TikTok’s ability to give unknown artists a large audience increases its need to license music from labels. “Sunroof” was so successful that Youre signed with Colombia Records and reached No. 4 on the Hot 100.
What’s past is prologue
TikTok has ample motivation to reduce what it pays music rights holders. Licensing costs eat up more than 70% of a music subscription service’s revenue with little left over after paying operating expenses. Social networks, on the other hand, generate huge sums of free cash flow. Facebook, for example, had an operating margin of 25% in 2022 and 40% in 2021.
Services that once butted heads with music rights holders decided it was wiser to build partnerships that enriched both sides. Like TikTok, YouTube began as an ad-supported platform built on user-generated content and characterized by minuscule royalties. Over time, YouTube attracted better advertisers, built a strong on-demand premium service and became a major source of revenue for labels and publishers. In the 12-month period ended June 30, 2022, YouTube paid music rights holders $6 billion through YouTube advertisements and fees from the YouTube Music subscription service.
Now, YouTube has “a phenomenal partnership” with rights owners after it “decided that music is important to us forever,” Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s former chief business officer, said during WMG’s Feb. 9 earnings call. It invested in music “holistically” by building a copyright management platform, Copyright ID, launching the YouTube Music subscription service and taking on TikTok with its short-form video platform, YouTube Shorts.
TikTok appears to share YouTube’s ambitions to offer a multitude of services that segment the market into ad-supported and paying customers. Parent company Bytedance already has an on-demand music service, Resso, operating in Brazil, Indonesia and India, and a separate on-demand service, Qishui Yinyue, in China. But in major markets like the U.S., TikTok users that want to listen to an entire track and explore an artist’s catalog end up going – in large numbers – to on-demand services like Spotify and Apple Music. Pairing its short-form video platform with an on-demand service would give TikTok a “significant opportunity” to leverage data and manage customers across multiple platforms, says one of the music industry sources. “Why would they not want to capture that demand themselves?”
“TikTok needs to do that [also],” Kyncl said during Warner’s earnings call. “It’s the right decision for them to evaluate.”
Additional reporting by Liz Dilts Marshall
Nick Cannon had nothing but supportive things to say about his daughter Monroe’s recent TikTok with Mariah Carey.
“I loved it. To be honest, it was epic,” the host of The Masked Singer told Entertainment Tonight of his ex-wife enlisting Roe for her latest take on the viral “It’s a Wrap” challenge. The funny clip, which also starred Kim Kardashian and North West, featured the two girls performing to a sped-up version of the song before Carey and Kardashian crashed the party from the sidelines with hairbrushes acting as mics in hand.
“My daughter has the entertainment bug,” Cannon continued. “[You can] definitely see that connection with her and her mom. It’s beautiful, the fact that they get to have fun with each other… families are connecting in a different way than ever before.
The Drumline star also explained that “It’s a Wrap” holds significance in his relationship with Carey, to whom he was married from 2008 to 2016. “That song that they were doing TikTok to is a song that I produced and worked on with Mariah, so even that made it special,” he revealed. “It was a touching moment…Her and Mariah they doing what they do. I don’t even know if I’m allowed to talk about it, ’cause Mariah’s like, ‘Let me handle this. I got this.’”
Carey’s “It’s a Wrap” has positively erupted on streaming thanks to the TikTok challenge, garnering more than one million streams per week. Meanwhile, Cannon is currently in the midst of hosting season 9 of The Masked Singer with unmasked contestants so far including Debbie Gibson, Howie Mandel, Sara Evans and the legendary Dick Van Dyke.
The European Union’s executive branch said Thursday that it has temporarily banned TikTok from phones used by employees as a cybersecurity measure, reflecting widening worries from Western officials over the Chinese-owned video sharing app.
In a first for the European Commission, its Corporate Management Board suspended the use of TikTok on devices issued to staff or personal devices that staff use for work.
TikTok faces intensifying scrutiny from Europe and the U.S. over security and data privacy amid worries that the hugely popular app could be used to promote pro-Beijing views or sweep up users’ information. It comes as China and the West are locked in a wider tug of war over technology ranging from spy balloons to computer chips.
The EU’s action follows similar moves in the U.S., where more than half of the states and Congress have banned TikTok from official government devices.
“The reason why this decision has been taken is to … increase the commission’s cybersecurity,” commission spokesperson Sonya Gospodinova said at a press briefing in Brussels. “Also, the measure aims to protect the commission against cybersecurity threats and actions which may be exploited for cyberattacks against the corporate environment of the commission.”
Caroline Greer, TikTok’s Brussels-based public policy official, tweeted that the suspension “is misguided and based on fundamental misconceptions.”
“We have requested a meeting to set the record straight,” she said, adding that TikTok, which has 125 million users in the 27-nation European Union, is “continuing to enhance” its approach to data security. That includes opening three European data centers and minimizing data sent outside of the continent.
Commission spokespeople declined to say whether a specific incident triggered the suspension or what’s needed to get it lifted.
Staffers would be required to delete TikTok from devices that they use for professional business by March 15, EU representatives said, but did not provide any details on how that would be enforced for people who use personal phones for work.
In Norway, which is not a member of the 27-nation EU, the justice minister was forced to apologize this month for failing to disclose that she had installed TikTok on her government-issued phone.
TikTok also has come under pressure from the EU to comply with upcoming new digital regulations aimed at getting big online platforms to clean up toxic and illegal content along with the bloc’s strict data privacy rules.
Mariah Carey enlisted Kim Kardashian and the reality star’s daughter North West for yet another iteration of the “It’s a Wrap” challenge on Monday night (Feb. 20).
“It’s a wrap! But never for us!” the icon captioned her TikTok, in which North and Carey’s daughter Monroe Cannon — whom the singer shares with ex-husband Nick Cannon — take center stage. The two girls nail adorable, arm-waving choreography set to Mimi’s 2009 track “It’s a Wrap” before their famous moms try to steal the spotlight — crashing the party from the wings of the frame with hairbrushes in hand as microphones.
From the looks of it, it appears the cute mommy-daughter night in may have been filmed in Kardashian’s famously monochrome mansion in Hidden Hills, Calif., which she used to share with ex-husband Kanye West.
Now that Monroe has taken part in her mom’s viral TikTok challenge, both of Dem Babies have filmed their own versions of “It’s a Wrap” with Mariah. Just last week, Moroccan helped the singer film another video set to the Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel deep cut from the back of a car, complete with him grabbing a phone out of her hands to declare “It’s a Wrap” for the unlucky guy on the other end of the line.
In the weeks since the Lambily first cooked up the track’s viral resurgence, the song has positively exploded on streaming, earning more than a million weekly streams thanks to the TikTok campaign. To celebrate its success, Carey also dropped a surprise It’s a Wrap EP centered around the kiss-off earlier this month.
Watch Mariah, Kim, Monroe and North fight for the spotlight in their “It’s a Wrap” challenge below.
Two more senators are calling for restrictions on TikTok’s operations in the U.S., citing alleged risks to national security and consumer privacy presented by the Chinese-owned platform.
In the letter sent Thursday, U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) called on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which is currently investigating TikTok’s 2017 merger with Musical.ly, “to swiftly conclude its investigation and impose strict structural restrictions” between the platform and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance — including by “potentially separating” the two companies. The letter was addressed to U.S. Treasury Secretary and CFIUS chair Janet Yellen.
In the letter, Blumenthal and Moran cite a December disclosure by ByteDance — reported by The New York Times — that four of its employees obtained the data of several TikTok users, including two journalists, in an effort to locate the sources of suspected leaks to journalists of internal company conversations and documents.
Despite ByteDance’s assertion that it fired the employees involved, Blumenthal and Moran allege that the scheme was in fact perpetrated by a “formal ‘Internal Audit and Risk Control’ team” directed by senior executives, including TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew.
“The incident also occurred while TikTok’s executives had repeatedly promised that Americans’ personal data was secure against such spying,” the letter reads, citing testimony given by TikTok’s vp/head of public policy, Michael Beckerman, to the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Consumer Protection in October 2021.
The letter goes on to claim that TikTok company engineers “continue to have dangerous access to Americans’ personal data and control over its algorithmic recommendation systems, access that continues enable this spying on journalists.”
The senators cite several more reports to bolster their case, including a December article in The Wall Street Journal reporting that TikTok’s product development and management — including oversight of its algorithmic recommendation system — remains based in China. Another article published by Forbes in August, which reported that roughly 300 current employees at TikTok and ByteDance work or have worked for Chinese propaganda outlets including Xinhua News Agency and China Global Television, is also held up as evidence to support restrictions.
Elsewhere, Blumenthal and Moran cite an October investigation by Consumer Reports that found TikTok tracks Americans — including those who don’t use the platform — by embedding “a tracking technology” on partner websites. “While this collection effort is ostensibly an advertising effort by the company, the transmission to TikTok of non-user IP addresses, a unique ID number, and information about what an individual is doing on a site provides a deep understanding of those individuals’ interests, behaviors, and other sensitive matters,” the letter adds.
Despite TikTok’s assurance that it no longer censors videos critical of the Chinese government and other authoritarian regimes, the senators additionally allege that the platform “continues to opaquely demote or remove certain content, including blocking LGBTQ accounts.”
TikTok “is clearly, inextricably dependent on ByteDance for its operations,” the letter concludes, “and therefore beholden to the government of China.”
Thursday’s letter is just the latest in a string of recent condemnations of TikTok by U.S. lawmakers. In December, President Joe Biden signed a bill that prohibits use of the platform by nearly 4 million government employees on devices owned by its agencies, joining at least 27 state governments and several universities that have passed similar measures. The same month, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Flor.), Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) introduced a bill that would effectively ban TikTok and any other China-based social media platform from operating in the United States. And earlier this month, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Col.), pushed Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores over national security concerns, claiming the Chinese Communist Party could “weaponize” the platform against the United States by forcing ByteDance to “surrender Americans’ sensitive data or manipulate the content Americans receive to advance China’s interests.”
These lawmakers clearly weren’t assuaged by TikTok’s announcement in June that it had started routing U.S. user data to Oracle cloud servers located in the U.S., instituted audits of its algorithms and established a new department to solely manage U.S. user data for the platform.
Concerns about TikTok have been prevalent in other corners of the West, most prominently in Europe. In January, Zi Chew met with European Union officials over concerns about child safety and data privacy, among other matters. On Friday, TikTok’s general manager of operations in Europe, Rich Waterworth, attempted to allay some of those concerns in a blog post where he noted that the company plans to establish two additional European data centers, citing a commitment “to keeping our European community and their data safe and secure.” He added that the company is “continuing to deliver against” a data governance strategy they set out for Europe last year, which includes plans to further reduce employee access to European data, minimize data flows outside Europe and store European user data locally.
Zi Chew is slated to appear before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on March 23, when he’s expected to comment on TikTok’s data security and user privacy policies, the app’s impact on children and ties with the Chinese Communist Party.
MELBOURNE, Australia — Labels trade body ARIA has questioned the motives behind TikTok’s “test” on users in these parts and demanded the short-form video platform immediately restore access to all music, for all Australians.
Earlier this month, ByteDance confirmed it was conducting an experiment in Australia, where TikTokers would have restrictions placed on their music options to soundtrack clips.
“Over the coming weeks we will be running a test in Australia to analyse how music is accessed and used on the platform,” reads a message from a TikTok rep. “Not all music is included in this test and we do not expect it to impact everyone on TikTok.”
The “test is underway,” and the app expects “that some of our users will not be able to access our full music and sounds library. For more than half of our community there will be no change to their experience and the test will not impact them.”
It’s unclear how many users have had their experience dampened, which titles and music labels have been removed, or precisely what TikTok hopes to gain from this procedure.
In one scenario, observers say, should TikTok find its users stay and stick to the app in the absence of major-label hits, the tech firm could gain an upper hand when it comes time to negotiate on content licenses.
On Wednesday (Feb. 15), ARIA addressed the elephant in the room.
In a carefully-worded statement, ARIA questions TikTok’s “decision to limit and remove access to music for select Australian creators and users” on its platform over the coming weeks.
“It is frustrating to see TikTok deliberately disrupt Australians’ user and creator experience in an attempt to downplay the significance of music on its platform,” comments ARIA CEO, Annabelle Herd, in a statement.
“After exploiting artists’ content and relationships with fans to build the platform, TikTok now seeks to rationalize cutting artists’ compensation by staging a ‘test’ of music’s role in content discovery.”
Herd points out the contraction in TikTok’s past mission statements.
“This is despite the fact that in 2021 TikTok’s global head of music, Ole Obermann, said: ‘Music is at the heart of the TikTok experience.’” This “test,” adds Herd, “is presented as an effort to analyse, improve and enhance the platform’s wider sound library, but as little as five months ago, TikTok’s chief operating officer Vanessa Pappas said that 80% of content consumed on TikTok is programmed by algorithms.”
If this is the case, Herd explains, “then it’s difficult to trust that this is a true test. TikTok can set its Australian algorithm upfront to – within parameters they define – deliver the results they want.”
And the results ARIA wants?
“Australians deserve better,” Herd concludes. “TikTok should end this ‘test’ immediately and restore music access to all users and creators.”
TikTok is a real hit with Gen Z in Australia, and is already a more popular social platform than Twitter among all Internet users in these parts, according to data published in the Digital 2022 Australia report.
The annual study found that users spent 40% more time scrolling the app each month compared with the previous year, and it’s now ahead of Twitter among the percentage of internet users who regularly use the platform.
Separately, TikTok recently launched SoundOn in Australia, a tool that allows creators to upload their music directly, and get paid.
The new platform, which is already live in the U.S., U.K., Brazil, Indonesia and elsewhere, helps independent emerging artists navigate its service, upload music and get paid for its use, market and promote themselves on TikTok and distribute their music to outside DSPs.
The catalog of Death Row Records, which includes canonical rap albums like 2Pac‘s All Eyez On Me and Snoop Dogg‘s Doggystyle, is now available on TikTok.
Snoop Dogg acquired the Death Row catalog last year and pulled it from streaming services, though Dr. Dre‘s The Chronic returned to platforms earlier this month, licensed to Interscope Records, in honor of the album’s 30th anniversary. The SoundOn deal marks the remainder of the Death Row catalog’s first official online release since it was pulled from streamers in February 2022.
“Since I took Death Row off streaming almost a year ago, not a day goes by without people asking me to put it back up,” Snoop Dogg said in a statement. “As the Super Bowl rolled around, I knew fans would be looking for the music from our iconic performance in 2022, so I wanted to reintroduce the most historic catalog to the people.” He added that Death Row releases “will be back on streaming services real soon.”
TikTok is touting the exclusive partnership, which launched on Sunday (Feb. 12) and continues for the rest of the week, as the “first-ever catalog reissue to release exclusively through SoundOn,” the distribution and marketing service the company launched in 2022. (SoundOn will distribute Death Row music to ByteDance platforms only, not to streaming services, once the exclusivity window ends next week.)
SoundOn was initially conceived to help “new and undiscovered artists,” according to TikTok global head of music Ole Obermann.
“We were hearing from a lot of artists that they loved being on TikTok and trying to build their community and hopefully reach really big audiences, but they were pretty overwhelmed, they didn’t really understand how to get onto TikTok, get music onto TikTok, get an account set up on TikTok, figure out how to position themselves in the right way,” Obermann told Billboard last year. “So what we came up with was, let’s have a special entrance into the platform that’s only available to these new and undiscovered artists, and then we’re gonna have a chance to work much more closely with them if this is the route they choose to come in. The goal is, really, that we find the promising artist and we walk them from the backstage door right onto the main stage and they’re there, they’re performing, it’s an incredible show and they’ve found their audience.”
Artists who have worked with SoundOn include Muni Long and Nicky Youre. It was initially only available in the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Indonesia but launched in Australia earlier this month.
TikTok is working on a feature that will allow creators to charge a price of their own choosing for some videos, according to The Information.
In addition, the popular app is rethinking its creator fund and experimenting with a change that would pay out more to creators than the initial version of the program, The Information reports. The new iteration of the fund may also potentially change the limits of who is eligible; creators might need to have more than 100,000 followers, for example. This “Creator Fund 2.0” could launch as early as March.
“We’re committed to exploring new ways to create a valuable and rewarding experience for the TikTok creator community,” a TikTok spokesperson says in an email. “On TikTok, anyone can be a creator and everyone can enjoy entertainment from our inspiring creators, and we aim to continue innovating this experience so people can express themselves, find their community, and be rewarded for their creativity.”
TikTok originally launched its creator fund in the summer of 2020 with $200 million “to help support ambitious creators who are seeking opportunities to foster a livelihood through their innovative content.” Shortly after, TikTok announced that the fund would eventually grow to more than $1 billion in the United States.
While TikTok’s growth has been meteoric in the last few years, it actually slowed in the United States in 2022, according to The Information, which reports that after the platform hit 114 million monthly users in June, the number has since decreased to 111 million.
As TikTok explores these new features, the company is also engaged in another test in Australia, where the platform is temporarily restricting the use of major-label songs in videos. “This will only affect certain music and is scheduled work while we analyze how sounds are accessed and added to videos, as well as looking to improve and enhance the wider Sounds Library,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement. “We appreciate it’s disappointing if a certain track is unavailable or if a sound is muted on a previous video. This change will not be in place for long and not all music is affected.”
Charlie Puth is hitting the road this spring and created a viral TikTok to share the news on Tuesday (Feb. 14).
On the social platform, the pop star started with layers of roaring applause before adding snippets of his hit singles “Attention” and the JungKook-assisted “Left and Right.” Then, he included narration by a female announcer before unveiling the finished product: “Grammy-nominated and multi-platinum singer-songwriter-producer Charlie Puth presents The Charlie Live Experience. See him live in concert across North America in 2023.”
Following a festival stop at Mexico’s Corona Capital Guadalajara on May 20, The Charlie Live Experience is set to kick off on May 24 at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in Dallas. From there, Puth will hit major cities like Nashville, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Philadelphia and New York City across 30 dates before wrapping up July 11 with a show at The Greek Theater in Los Angeles.
Tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday (Feb. 17) at 10 a.m. local time via LiveNation’s website. A special pre-sale with select VIP ticket packages will begin two days prior on Wednesday (Feb. 15).
The tour follows Puth’s series of One Night Only shows at the tail end of 2022, which saw him play an intimate run of theaters and smaller venues across the U.S. to finally debut his latest album Charlie live to his fans for the first time.
In December, the “That’s Hilarious” singer celebrated turning 31 by taking his romance with childhood friend Brooke Sansone public.
Check out Charlie’s TikTok announcement and complete list of upcoming tour dates below.