ByteDance has announced that it will be shutting down its music streaming service, TikTok Music, in November 2024. According to a notice posted on TikTok Music’s website, the service will officially close on November 28, 2024. TikTok Music had been available in Indonesia, Brazil, Australia, Singapore, and Mexico.
Subscribers can continue to use the platform until the closure date, after which all renewals will be automatically canceled. Users are encouraged to transfer their playlists to other streaming platforms by October 28, with refund requests due by November 28.
In a statement, Ole Obermann, Global Head of Music Business Development at TikTok, explained that the company is shifting its focus to enhancing TikTok’s role in supporting music streaming services rather than competing with them. “Our ‘Add to Music App’ feature has already enabled hundreds of millions of track saves to playlists on partner music streaming services,” Obermann said, highlighting TikTok’s continued efforts to benefit artists, songwriters, and the music industry. The “Add to Music” feature, launched in February, allows TikTok users to add tracks directly to playlists on platforms like Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Spotify.
TikTok Music originated from ByteDance’s Resso, which first launched in India and Indonesia in 2019 before expanding to Brazil. However, the service did not grow significantly beyond these few markets. ByteDance likely aimed to leverage TikTok’s popularity to drive music streams within its own ecosystem, but international expansion remained limited.
Despite TikTok’s success in music discovery and its impact on streaming, the company has faced tensions with the music industry. Earlier in 2023, Universal Music Group briefly pulled its catalog from TikTok due to disagreements over royalties. The two parties later reconciled and signed a new agreement in March.
In addition to these challenges, TikTok has been facing legal battles, including a case related to a potential ban in the U.S., which may have hindered ByteDance’s plans to expand TikTok Music into other markets, such as the U.S. ByteDance rebranded Resso as TikTok Music in Brazil and Indonesia in 2023, later expanding the service to Singapore, Australia, and Mexico. However, the service was banned in India earlier this year.
