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President Joe Biden won’t enforce a ban on the social media app TikTok that is set to take effect a day before he leaves office on Monday, a U.S. official said Thursday, leaving its fate in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump.
Congress last year, in a law signed by Biden, required that TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance divest the company by Jan. 19, a day before the presidential inauguration. The official said the outgoing administration was leaving the implementation of the law — and the potential enforcement of the ban — to Trump.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal Biden administration thinking.
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Trump, who once called to ban the app, has since pledged to keep it available in the U.S., though his transition team has not said how they intend to accomplish that.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration and be granted a prime seating location on the dais as the president-elect’s national security adviser signals that the incoming administration may take steps to “keep TikTok from going dark.”
Incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz on Thursday told Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” that the federal law that could ban TikTok by Sunday also “allows for an extension as long as a viable deal is on the table.”
The push to save TikTok, much like the move to ban it in the U.S., has crossed partisan lines. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said he spoke with Biden on Thursday to advocate for extending the deadline to ban TikTok.
“It’s clear that more time is needed to find an American buyer and not disrupt the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans, of so many influencers who have built up a good network of followers,” Schumer said Thursday on the Senate floor.
Democrats had tried on Wednesday to pass legislation that would have extended the deadline, but Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas blocked it. Cotton, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that TikTok has had ample time to find a buyer.
“TikTok is a Chinese Communist spy app that addicts our kids, harvests their data, targets them with harmful and manipulative content, and spreads communist propaganda,” Cotton said.
TikTok CEO’s is expected to be seated on the dais for the inauguration along with tech billionaires Elon Musk, who is CEO of SpaceX, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to two people with the matter. The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.
Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a legal challenge to the statute brought by TikTok, its China-based parent company ByteDance, and users of the app. The Justices seemed likely to uphold the law, which requires ByteDance to divest TikTok on national security grounds or face a ban in one of its biggest markets.
“If the Supreme Court comes out with a ruling in favor of the law, President Trump has been very clear: Number one, TikTok is a great platform that many Americans use and has been great for his campaign and getting his message out. But number two, he’s going to protect their data,” Waltz said on Wednesday.
“He’s a deal maker. I don’t want to get ahead of our executive orders, but we’re going to create this space to put that deal in place,” he added.
Separately on Wednesday, Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, dodged a question during a Senate hearing on whether she’d uphold a TikTok ban.
Trump has reversed his position on the popular app, having tried to ban it during his first term in office over national security concerns. He joined TikTok during his 2024 presidential campaign and his team used it to connect with younger voters, especially male voters, by pushing content that was often macho and aimed at going viral. He pledged to “save TikTok” during the campaign and has credited the platform with helping him win more youth votes.
The times they are a-changin’, and with just a few days to go before a potential U.S. ban of TikTok, veteran musician Bob Dylan has finally joined the popular video sharing app.
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83-year-old Dylan made his debut on TikTok on Tuesday (Jan. 14), sharing a single post which urges potential followers to “Explore the world of Bob Dylan, now on TikTok”. The accompanying video features numerous clips, stills, and record covers from Dylan’s lengthy career, soundtracked to clips of “Like a Rolling Stone”, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”, “Hurricane”.
While Dylan’s appearance on the app in the wake of the release of James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown biopic has been well-received by his fanbase, much of the attention is being focused on his somewhat late arrival given the impending TikTok Ban.
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“You’ve got 30 minutes king,” wrote one user on Dylan’s post, while another added, “bob dylan save tiktok.” Others still made reference to his catalog in their posts, noting that “tiktok is knocking on heavens door”.
As it stands, TikTok is facing an imminent ban because the American government is worried about its Chinese ownership. After the Supreme Court last month agreed to hear TikTok’s challenge to the law that would either force ByteDance to sell the app or bar it from the U.S., the Court’s imminent decision means that if the law is upheld, ByteDance will be forced to sell off the app or face a ban on Sunday (Jan. 19).
Dylan’s immediate future, however, looks a little more certain currently, especially given that the response to A Complete Unknown has seen his catalog earn 11.6 million U.S. on-demand streams in the week ending Dec. 26.
While it’s unknown whether Dylan’s debut on TikTok is part of a biopic-inspired decision to reach a newer fanbase, it does come about shortly after his recent decision to ostensibly begin using social media with greater frequency. In November, Dylan shared a Tweet praising a performance from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in France, leading Cave to respond with gratitude.
“I was elated to think Bob Dylan had been in the audience,” Cave wrote on his sporadically-updated Red Hand Files website. “And since I doubt I’ll get an opportunity to thank him personally, I’ll thank him here. Thank you, Bob!”
As U.S. TikTok users brace for a potential ban of the platform, some of them are actively testing other options: Two apps with TikTok-like characteristics, RedNote and Lemon8, are now the most popular free downloads in Apple’s App Store.
Lemon8 launched in the U.S. in February 2023 and cracked the top 20 on the Apple App Store four months later, according to Sensor Tower. Like TikTok, Lemon8 features a “For You” feed that recommends clips and a “following” feed that serves up videos from creators that users follow. Sensor Tower reported in October that 94% of Lemon8 users are women and that the app had been downloaded 52 million times globally.
RedNote, which was founded in 2013, is much bigger: Bloomberg recently reported that it has more than 300 million monthly active users and that it made $1 billion in profit in 2024. The platform has a trending feed that resembles TikTok’s, allowing users to vertically scroll through short-form videos. It also incorporates regular photos, text posts, and e-commerce; one tester described it as “Instagram meets TikTok meets Reddit.”
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Both Lemon8 and RedNote are owned by Chinese entities — in fact, Lemon8 is owned by ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company. That could mean these apps also have a precarious future in the U.S., as TikTok is facing a ban because the American government is worried about its Chinese ownership.
“I’ve been concerned, literally for years, that because TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese firm, and every company — based upon Chinese law — has to be first and foremost loyal to the Communist Party of China, not to their shareholders or customers, that TikTok has posed a national security concern,” Sen. Mark Warner said earlier this month. His concerns would presumably extend to other ByteDance-owned companies, like CapCut and Lemon8.
In December, the Supreme Court agreed to hear TikTok’s challenge to the law that would either force ByteDance to sell the app or bar it from the U.S. President-elect Donald Trump also asked the court to pause the ban, promising to “resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office.”
But after the Supreme Court hearing last week, most legal experts believe the justices will uphold the law. In that case, ByteDance would have to offload TikTok or face a ban on Jan. 19.
At the Supreme Court hearing, Justice Brett Kavanaugh claimed that China could use data harvested from TikTok to “develop spies, to turn people, to blackmail people.” And Chief Justice John Roberts asked how the court was “supposed to ignore the fact that the ultimate parent [company] is, in fact, subject to doing intelligence work for the Chinese government?”
With TikTok’s possible prohibition just days away, some labels have already started gaming out alternative marketing strategies.
“It’s hard to imagine a reality where TikTok actually goes down,” one executive told Billboard in December. “But we need to be prepared.”
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TikTok, the wildly popular social media app that has made stars among some of its users and exploded as a commerce hub, is under the threat of being banned or forced to sell off its assets. With the threat of TikTok going away, thousands of users are flocking to the Chinese social media app RedNote and discovering a new community in the process.
The United States Supreme Court is currently weighing a decision on a law that would ban TikTok in the country over national security concerns and the fact it is owned by a Chinese company. The proposed deadline is January 19, and the nation’s highest court has previously heard arguments from the social media brand’s parent company ByteDance and the incoming Trump administration’s position thus far is to keep access open to the app in the States.
RedNote, which is also known as Xiaohongshu, first launched in 2013 as a shopping destination but now has expanded into a full-on social media hub where users share various forms of content including the short-form video format TikTok is known for. According to a report from Reuters, over 700,000 users joined RedNote in the course of two days with a reported 50,000 Americans among that number but pales in comparison to the roughly 150 million American users of TikTok.
RedNote is currently the second most popular free app on Apple’s App Store. The outlet also added that Lemon8, which is a social media app owned by ByteDance, has seen increased user numbers as well.
On X, the massive social media defection is being documented with some revealing the language barriers users are facing and how some Americans are helping Chinese users improve their English. With some of the stringent laws in China, users have been careful in what they share and discuss on the app but the influx of users is seemingly welcomed.
We’ve got some reactions from X regarding the TikTok defection to RedNote below.
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Photo: Getty
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Source: NurPhoto / Getty / TikTok
TikTok is currently on the verge of being banned, but reportedly, China is mulling the idea of selling the platform to Elon Musk.
Word on the social media streets is that Elon Musk could potentially add TikTok to his portfolio of sh*t he owns but has no business owning in the first damn place. Musk, one of President-elect Trump’s newest rump kissers, joins another potential buyer, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, another Trump fan throwing his name in the hat as a potential buyer of TikTok.
The Orange Menace is now in favor of saving the platform after once being on the side of banning it. In a Newsmax interview, he explained his position changed, telling the “news channel,” “We won young people, and I think that’s a big credit to TikTok. So I’m not opposed to TikTok … I had a very good experience with TikTok.”
Trump on TikTok: “We won young people and I think that’s a big credit to TikTok. So I’m not opposed to TikTok … I had a very good experience with TikTok.” pic.twitter.com/dKDBrvsZDI
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 14, 2025
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Hilariously, TikTok denies the validity of the reports of Musk seeking to acquire the platform.
Investors Business Daily reports that Beijing officials are mulling their options as the January 19 deadline approaches, forcing Chinese-based company Byte Dance to sell or face a ban in U.S. app stores. During a hearing last week, Supreme Court justices seemed to be leaning towards siding with the U.S. Government.
Per Investors Business Daily:
Chinese government officials prefer that TikTok remains under the control of ByteDance, Bloomberg reported citing unnamed sources. But officials have begun to discuss “contingency plans,” according to Bloomberg.
A deal with one of Trump’s most prominent supporters in Musk “holds some appeal” for the Chinese government, Bloomberg reported. Musk could run the business along with X, the former Twitter that Musk acquired in 2022.
The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reported early Tuesday that Chinese officials have “internally discussed options including the possibility of allowing a trusted non-Chinese party such as Elon Musk to invest in or take control of TikTok’s U.S. operations.”
In an emailed comment to IBD, a TikTok spokesperson said the company “cannot be expected to comment on pure fiction.”
According to Wedbush analysts, if Musk is serious about buying TikTok, IBD reports that it could cost the Tesla chief between $40 billion and $50 billion.
Meanwhile, TikTok fans are also making moves. In response to the pending ban, U.S. TikTok users are signing up for the Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu, which is now the top-downloaded app in the U.S.
According to the AP, TikTok refugees—yes, that’s what they are seriously calling themselves—claim to be signing up for the app to protest the U.S.’s potential ban on it.
For American TikTok “refugees”, here is a list of Chinese social media substitution apps. pic.twitter.com/eDzpqpE1Ro
— Li Zexin (@XH_Lee23) January 14, 2025
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Bruh.
Is it really that serious?
Whatever happens, a lot of people need to really touch grass.
You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
1. Mmmmmhmmmm
2. You sure it doesn’t have anything to do with China’s government getting your info?
5. Hmmmmmm
9. Good chance this won’t end well
10. Exactly
If the Supreme Court upholds a U.S. law that would ban TikTok if its Chinese parent company ByteDance fails to sell it by Jan. 19, it would be bad news for the music industry, including the live events business – which has increasingly relied on TikTok as a marketing engine in recent years.
A decision by the court could be days, even hours, away, and it will have a major impact on dozens of U.S. industries that rely on the site for marketing, including the live music business during one of its busiest marketing months. TikTok’s popularity among concert and festival marketers has increased significantly in the last two years, explains FanIQ CEO Jesse Lawrence, as the event industry shifts to content-based marketing models.
“The music industry is finally getting away from the static lineup ad and embracing storytelling and lifestyle content,” said Lawrence, who notes that the the company is seeing a return of 15 to 20 times its ad spend on TikTok.
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Part of the appeal of TikTok, Lawrence said, is that the learning curve for posting and sharing ads on the platform is fairly simple. Customers are separated into two buckets: upper funnel, which includes essentially new customers who know little, if anything, about an upcoming event, and lower funnel, in which clients have gained awareness and are close to making a final decision on a purchase.
“Our whole approach is about matching upper funnel engagement, based on the user’s interests, with content we’ve created around the festival,” says Lawrence. That includes using beauty and fashion content to find potential customers for a summer country music festival, sneaker content for hip-hop festivals or skateboarding and surfing content to market a punk rock and action sports expo.
“Our videos have a watch time tracker and if someone watches the video for 15 seconds or more, the next video they’ll get is one with specific details about the festival and specific videos instructions on conversion,” meaning buying tickets, Lawrence said. He later noted, “it’s just about knowing where your audience is spending time and putting content in front of them on those platforms.”
A recent content piece FanIQ created for the Oceanfront Festival detailed rapper Key Glock’s extensive sneaker collection, featuring interview snippets with the Memphis rapper.
“That video is getting served to the fan from the festival’s account,” Lawrence said. “The whole idea is that we’re taking content that feels very organic and putting it into paid (content).”
Lawrence encourages his clients to use multiple social media platforms – Snap, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit and Spotify — for their marketing campaigns, noting that each platform is home to a different audience.
FanIQ is one of the new systems that “aggregates performance across every platform,” Lawrence explained. “We want to give them this access so they can easily understand what’s working, do more of it where we’re seeing performance, and scale back where we’re not.”
Will Franklin with UK marketing firm Round says the strength of TikTok as a marketing platform for the live music business comes from its early success helping artists go viral, starting with the release of “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X in December 2018. In 2020, Meghan Thee Stallion’s tracks “WAP” and “Savage” — used in countless dance videos by contributors to the platform — made her the No. 1 most played artist on TikTok that year and helped her land headliner slots at a number of major festivals in 2021 including Lollapalooza.
Franklin also notes that fans are increasingly looking to TikTok for video and content from events, noting that searches for the Boomtown festival in the U.K. soared from 29.5 million in the month leading up to the event to 266.8 million during the festival, creating increased awareness around the band.
Many marketers are holding out hope that TikTok will receive a last-minute reprieve from the Supreme Court, but several news outlets covering the hearing reported that a majority of the court’s justices expressed a lack of support for overturning the current ban. If the site is outlawed in the U.S., Franklin says he believes YouTube Shorts will temporarily fill the void.
“I haven’t seen huge budget shifts from TikTok to YouTube yet, but a lot of my clients are experimenting and spending small allocations on different platforms in case they do have to make a shift,” Franklin explains. “There’s a hesitancy because no other platform has as many Gen Z users as TikTok, but the assumption is that if the site is banned, its user will go somewhere else. For now all we can do is guess which platform that may be.”
If the Supreme Court does not intervene to save TikTok, it will be removed from U.S. app stores on Jan. 19 but remain live on users’ phones, albeit without regular push software updates to fix bugs and glitches. ByteDance might be able to maneuver and keep the platform online for a few months after the cut-off date, but the company hasn’t unveiled any of its contingency plans.
“We’re advising client partners to be cautious but optimistic, and recommending they pause TikTok media spend starting Jan. 18 to avoid any unforeseen investment complications,” said Kerry McKibbin, president/partner at ad agency Mischief @ No Fixed Address, adding that advertisers should familiarize themselves with the shorts platforms on both YouTube and Meta if they are concerned about a TikTok shutdown.
In one of the most important cases of the social media age, free speech and national security collide at the Supreme Court on Friday in arguments over the fate of TikTok, a wildly popular digital platform that roughly half the people in the United States use for entertainment and information.
TikTok says it plans to shut down the social media site in the U.S. by Jan. 19 unless the Supreme Court strikes down or otherwise delays the effective date of a law aimed at forcing TikTok’s sale by its Chinese parent company.
Working on a tight deadline, the justices also have before them a plea from President-elect Donald Trump, who has dropped his earlier support for a ban, to give him and his new administration time to reach a “political resolution” and avoid deciding the case. It’s unclear if the court will take the Republican president-elect’s views — a highly unusual attempt to influence a case — into account.
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TikTok and China-based ByteDance, as well as content creators and users, argue the law is a dramatic violation of the Constitution’s free speech guarantee.
“Rarely if ever has the court confronted a free-speech case that matters to so many people,” lawyers for the users and content creators wrote. Content creators are anxiously awaiting a decision that could upend their livelihoods and are eyeing other platforms.
The case represents another example of the court being asked to rule about a medium with which the justices have acknowledged they have little familiarity or expertise, though they often weigh in on meaty issues involving restrictions on speech.
The Biden administration, defending the law that President Joe Biden signed in April after it was approved by wide bipartisan majorities in Congress, contends that “no one can seriously dispute that (China’s) control of TikTok through ByteDance represents a grave threat to national security.”
Officials say Chinese authorities can compel ByteDance to hand over information on TikTok’s U.S. patrons or use the platform to spread or suppress information.
But the government “concedes that it has no evidence China has ever attempted to do so,” TikTok told the justices, adding that limits on speech should not be sustained when they stem from fears that are predicated on future risks.
In December, a panel of three appellate judges, two appointed by Republicans and one by a Democrat, unanimously upheld the law and rejected the First Amendment speech claims.
Adding to the tension, the court is hearing arguments just nine days before the law is supposed to take effect and 10 days before a new administration takes office.
In language typically seen in a campaign ad rather than a legal brief, lawyers for Trump have called on the court to temporarily prevent the TikTok ban from going into effect but refrain from a definitive resolution.
“President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government — concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged,” D. John Sauer, Trump’s choice to be his administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, wrote in a legal brief filed with the court.
Trump took no position on the underlying merits of the case, Sauer wrote. Trump’s campaign team used TikTok to connect with younger voters, especially male voters, and Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, in December. He has 14.7 million followers on TikTok.
The justices have set aside two hours for arguments, and the session likely will extend well beyond that. Three highly experienced Supreme Court lawyers will be making arguments. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar will present the Biden administration’s defense of the law, while Trump’s solicitor general in his first administration, Noel Francisco, will argue on behalf of TikTok and ByteDance. Stanford Law professor Jeffrey Fisher, representing content creators and users, will be making his 50th high court argument.
If the law takes effect, Trump’s Justice Department will be charged with enforcing it. Lawyers for TikTok and ByteDance have argued that the new administration could seek to mitigate the law’s most severe consequences.
But they also said that a shutdown of just a month would cause TikTok to lose about one-third of its daily users in the U.S. and significant advertising revenue.
As it weighs the case, the court will have to decide what level of review it applies to the law. Under the most searching review, strict scrutiny, laws almost always fail. But two judges on the appellate court that upheld the law said it would be the rare exception that could withstand strict scrutiny.
TikTok, the app’s users and many briefs supporting them urge the court to apply strict scrutiny to strike down the law.
But the Democratic administration and some of its supporters cite restrictions on foreign ownership of radio stations and other sectors of the economy to justify the effort to counter Chinese influence in the TikTok ban.
A decision could come within days.
This story was originally published by The Associated Press.
Instrumental soul music is not in high demand in 2025. But last summer, Fat Beats Records quietly moved hundreds of copies of El Michels Affair’s ‘Enter the 37th Chamber‘ — an anniversary edition of an album containing instrumental soul versions of the Wu-Tang Clan’s iconic hit “C.R.E.A.M.,” Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya,” Ghostface Killah’s “Cherchez La Ghost” and more.
The majority of direct-to-consumer sales came through TikTok Shop, an e-commerce platform inside the short-form video app that allows users to easily buy items without having to leave for another site. “We found some cool creators, sent them the vinyl, and they did an unboxing video, or talked about some of the tracks while playing the music in the background, and then linked directly to TikTok Shop,” explains Molly Bouchon, director of digital at Rostrum Records, which acquired Fat Beats in 2024. The El Michels Affair reissue is now sold out.
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TikTok Shop is relatively new and thus often overlooked by many artists and record labels, according to Itai Winter, vp of commercial partnerships at the marketing platform Genni, which helps match creators with music promotion campaigns. The fact that TikTok’s fate in the U.S. remains uncertain probably hasn’t helped; the Supreme Court will hear arguments on Friday (Jan. 10) about whether the app should be sold or shut down in the U.S.
Still, Winter estimates that “probably about a fifth of the For You page [on the app] are TikTok Shop-related posts” now. And harnessing that attention can pay off handsomely, at least when it comes to driving vinyl purchases: “We’re doing $15,000 to $20,000 in sales every month” through the platform, Bouchon says.
And she hopes there might be room to do more: “How do we make TikTok Shop a $40,000 or $50,000 a month revenue builder for us?”
TikTok officially rolled out TikTok Shop in September 2023 as part of a push into the lucrative world of e-commerce. “We have a very aggressive plan to make a splash in the industry and make sure that people out there understand that TikTok is a place for shopping,” Nico Le Bourgeois, head of U.S. operations for TikTok Shop, told The New York Times.
“With the number of people shopping on TikTok Shop every month nearly tripling since officially launching in September 2023, TikTok Shop is leveling the playing field so that any creator, merchant, brand and product can become a huge hit on our platform,” Le Bourgeois added in a recent statement to Billboard.
Genni became an official TikTok Shop partner as soon as it launched. “I got a really in-depth look and a chance to see what is actually driving sales,” Winter says. He frequently saw success when creators, rather than artists, posted about merchandise like records. Creators are incentivized to do so because they receive a commission on sales from links they share. Sellers can set commissions as they see fit; they’re often between 12% and 16%, according to Winter.
Alex F., who goes by plastic.disc on TikTok, is a self-professed “huge music nerd” who posts all manner of vinyl-related videos on the platform — “my $7,000 turntable set-up“; “more weird and unusual records in my collection!” He now often includes links to TikTok Shop and appreciates the commissions he receives from sales because they help feed back into his vinyl habit. (Though he would post the videos “even if I wasn’t making money — it’s what I love,” he says.)
These clips can spread far and wide: A plastic.disc post about Mac Miller’s 7″ single “The Spins” earned more than 2 million views, helping to move 744 copies of the record through TikTok Shop in a single week in October.
Winter has worked out a rough rule of thumb: A million views on a TikTok video with a TikTok Shop link usually translates to around $6,000 to $8,000 in LP sales. “It’s really convenient for people to see an unboxing video, think, ‘That’s cool,’ and go buy it,” says Alex F. TikTok has “primed their users to make transactions quickly,” adds Carly Redford, former director of e-commerce at Manhead Merch.
“I unfortunately know that,” Bouchon jokes. “I swear every day I get something from TikTok Shop.”
While TikTok Shop has the potential to turbocharge sales, many merchandise companies are not yet equipped to pivot rapidly to meet unexpected geysers of demand. They tend to work on months-long time horizons leading up to a release date. But release dates don’t matter as much on TikTok, which has consistently rejuvenated older songs.
As a result, “A lot of the fulfillment centers are having difficulty,” according to Johnny Cloherty, co-founder of the digital marketing company Songfluencer. “TikTok requires you to ship within two business days, and that’s tough for larger merchandise companies.”
One record that Winter was promoting went out of stock five times over the course of three months. In a way, this is a good problem to have. Still, “It can be frustrating,” he says. “You wake up to a viral video, and you’re selling 10 units an hour. Call the distribution center, and they’re like, ‘Don’t worry about it, we’ll send you another batch in two weeks.’ I’m like, ‘I need that yesterday.’”
Those delays mean that acts are leaving money on the table. On top of that, other TikTok Shop users may be siphoning off money that should go into artists’ pockets. Although TikTok Shop policy “expressly prohibits the unauthorized use of any third-party intellectual property rights,” Redford says, “There is so much bootleg merch [on the platform].”
This is a common problem on e-commerce sites. “That happens on Etsy, on Pinterest, on Facebook Marketplace, wherever,” Cloherty says. However, “None of those platforms drive even close to the degree of consumption and discovery that TikTok does,” he continues, which could make bootlegs on TikTok Shop more detrimental.
According to TikTok Shop’s Intellectual Property Rights report, published in October, the platform “implements proactive measures to identify and prevent potential infringements, significantly reducing their occurrence. Between July 2023 and June 2024, more than 5,254,000 products were prevented from going live.” In addition, “497,026 products were taken down after going live for IPR violations.”
Copyright owners can report infringement notices to TikTok Shop. In Redford’s experience, though, the most effective way for artists to combat bootlegs is to sell their own official products.
Despite success stories like El Michels Affair’s Enter the 37th Chamber, Redford still hasn’t seen many artists experimenting with TikTok Shop campaigns. “I feel like labels aren’t really focusing enough on it,” says Amy Hart, a digital marketer and co-founder of prairy, a new indie label. “We’re actively talking about it and figuring that side of things out.”
As with all things TikTok, it’s nearly impossible to determine in advance what products — and what videos — are going to cause users to smash the “buy” button. “TikTok Shop is tricky,” acknowledges Tyler Melton, who posts vinyl-focused videos of his own as tyler.fortherecord. “It will either not care about your video at all, or maybe the way you do your title or your intro will hook people.”
Winter’s biggest wins so far have come with vinyl. “We tried selling sweatshirts a couple of times, with only limited success,” he notes.
He believes the merchandise needs pizzazz — users may be unmoved by a simple T-shirt with an artist’s logo. (The El Michels Affair LP was described in one TikTok video as “a sick black-and-yellow” pressing, while a recent Wiz Khalifa vinyl reissue featured eye-catching “retro video game inspired artwork.”) “You can’t look at TikTok Shop like you’re uploading everything in your merch store,” Cloherty says. “It’s more like, what merch items can spark a TikTok-worthy moment?”
“This is all pretty new,” Bouchon adds. “Now I think we’re all realizing, ‘Oh shit, we need to prioritize this.’”
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Source: NurPhoto / Getty / Donald Trump / TikTok
TikTok is still facing a potential ban in the United States, but the popular social media platform might have found an unlikely savior in Donald Trump. Some folks can see the jig with this latest move.
In an interesting turn of events, Donald Trump, who has had a wishy-washy position on the matter, is now calling for the Supreme Court to pause the looming ban on the popular social media platform TikTok.
Trump’s take on the matter is in direct contrast to the Biden administration and some Republican, former Trump, and Democratic official’s stance that the Chinese-owned platform poses a “grave” threat to the country’s national security.
If TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, doesn’t sell TikTok to an American company, it will be officially banned on January 19, one day before Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Per NBC News:
“President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute,” wrote D. John Sauer, Trump’s lawyer who is also the president-elect’s pick for U.S. solicitor general. “Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act’s deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case, thus permitting President Trump’s incoming Administration the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case.”
The US Supreme Court decided to hear the case and fast-tracked the schedule for briefings and oral arguments, but it did not decide whether to consider TikTok’s request to pause the implementation of the ban.
Never Forget, Donald Trump Wanted TikTok Banned
Trump, who famously tried to ban TikTok in 2020 during his first failed presidency, is now claiming he can somehow negotiate a deal to “save” the platform after he met with the company’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, claiming he now has a “warm spot” for the platform.
“President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government—concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged,” Sauer notes.
While the news of TikTok’s potential saving is making some people happy, there are many who see the move as a political one.
“Donald Trump’s reversal on the TikTok ban is the most billionaire thing ever. The president-elect, himself a billionaire, changed his mind because his billionaire donor Larry Ellison asked him to. Not good for democracy!” read one post on X, formally Twitter.
Another post on X read, “Hold the fuck on. The same Donald Trump who is threatening to “take back the Panama Canal” from PANAMA because it’s being “controlled by” the Chinese, has asked the Supreme Court to pause the law which would ban TikTok here unless it’s sold, thereby allowing the app to continue to be controlled by… the Chinese? Do I have that just about right?”
We can also see the jig.
You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
1. This video proves why Donald Trump isn’t the brightest person on the planet
2. Imperial fluffing
3. We guess
4. LOL, of course he doesn’t
President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into effect until his administration can pursue a “political resolution” to the issue.
The request came as TikTok and the Biden administration filed opposing briefs to the court, in which the company argued the court should strike down a law that could ban the platform by Jan. 19 while the government emphasized its position that the statute is needed to eliminate a national security risk.
“President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute. Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act’s deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case,” said Trump’s amicus brief, which supported neither party in the case and was written by D. John Sauer, Trump’s choice for solicitor general.
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The argument submitted to the court is the latest example of Trump inserting himself in national issues before he takes office. The Republican president-elect has already begun negotiating with other countries over his plans to impose tariffs, and he intervened earlier this month in a plan to fund the federal government, calling for a bipartisan plan to be rejected and sending Republicans back to the negotiating table.
He has been holding meetings with foreign leaders and business officials at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida while he assembles his administration, including a meeting last week with TikTok CEO Shou Chew.
Trump has reversed his position on the popular app, having tried to ban it during his first term in office over national security concerns. He joined TikTok during his 2024 presidential campaign and his team used it to connect with younger voters, especially male voters, by pushing content that was often macho and aimed at going viral.
He said earlier this year that he still believed there were national security risks with TikTok, but that he opposed banning it.
The filings Friday come ahead of oral arguments scheduled for Jan. 10 on whether the law, which requires TikTok to divest from its China-based parent company or face a ban, unlawfully restricts speech in violation of the First Amendment. The law was signed by President Joe Biden in April after it passed Congress with broad bipartisan support. TikTok and ByteDance filed a legal challenge afterwards.
Earlier this month, a panel of three federal judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld the statute, leading TikTok to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
The brief from Trump said he opposes banning TikTok at this junction and “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office.”
In their brief to the Supreme Court on Friday, attorneys for TikTok and its parent company ByteDance argued the federal appeals court erred in its ruling and based its decision on “alleged ‘risks’ that China could exercise control” over TikTok’s U.S. platform by pressuring its foreign affiliates.
The Biden administration has argued in court that TikTok poses a national security risk due to its connections to China. Officials say Chinese authorities can compel ByteDance to hand over information on TikTok’s U.S. patrons or use the platform to spread or suppress information.
But the government “concedes that it has no evidence China has ever attempted to do so,” TikTok’s legal filing said, adding that the U.S. fears are predicated on future risks.
In its filing Friday, the Biden administration said because TikTok “is integrated with ByteDance and relies on its propriety engine developed and maintained in China,” its corporate structure carries with it risk.
This story was originally published by The Associated Press.