It appears TikTok has bigger plans beyond pre-teens dancing the renegade. Billboard is reporting that TikTok is locking in some major short-term licensing deals. Furthermore, TikTok has secured deals with some of the industry’s biggest publishers. These deals include the likes of Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music.
TikTok, which has come down with copyright lawsuits and has been caught collecting data on children, seems to be taking the right steps in acquiring these publishing rights. The infamous lip-syncing app has seen much success in the last year. While pulling in over $50 million in the final quarter of 2019, TikTok has clear plans to continue to grow.
Currently, it offers creators a library of 15-second song clips to use in their videos, while usually paying royalties to artists whose tracks are used. These deals will hopefully help both artists and publishers profit off the app, and expand the TikTok library.
The news comes as parent company of TikTok, ByteDance recently launched a new music streaming app in India called Resso. The app encourages users to share lyrics, comments and other user-generated content with each other, alongside full-length tracks.
TikTok formally known as Musical.y, has more than 8,000 licensing deals. The parent company of TikTok, Bytedance bought Musical.ly for $800 million in 2017, merged the two in August 2018. Stay tuned for more updates regarding these partnerships.
