Given how closely music discovery is tied up with TikTok, it wouldn’t be surprising if the company launched a music streaming app of its own. Well, exposed by patent filing insider Suggest that Tiktok is working on just that.
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, filed a trademark application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for “TikTok Music” in May. According to the filing, the service will let users buy, play, share and download music. It will allow users to create, share and recommend playlists, comment on music as well as livestream audio and video. ByteDance had already applied for the “TikTok Music” trademark in Australia last November.
ByteDance already has music streaming experience. In 2020, ByteDance launched Reso, a music streaming app, in India, Brazil and Indonesia. Reso has some of the same features described in the “TikTok Music” filing, such as the ability to create playlists, share songs on social media, and interact with the app’s community.
ByteDance also uses TikTok to bring existing users to Resso. according to a report of InformationThe TikTok app in Brazil comes with a button that redirects users to Resso to listen to the full version of the song they’re interested in, a move that helps keep users within the ByteDance ecosystem.
Information also reports that Resso had over 40 million monthly users in India, Brazil and Indonesia as of November 2021, a number that is likely to increase. Earlier this year, a report of insider revealed Resso’s monthly active users grew by 304 percent between January 2021 and January 2022 in India alone, while Spotify grew 38 percent in the country during the same period.
It’s unclear whether ByteDance plans to develop a music streaming app based on the Reso framework, or if it will come with something else entirely. As TikTok had a profound impact on the way social media sites operate, it is possible that a music streaming app with TikTok could change the music streaming industry, forcing the services to adapt.