A TikTok Music App May Be in the Works – CNET

A TikTok Music app may in development for the US market, according to a filing made by ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

As earlier uncovered by Business Insider, ByteDance filed a trademark application with the USPTO on May 9. The application lists a variety of potential goods and services, including “allowing users to purchase, play, share, download music, songs, albums, [and] lyrics,” as well as “live stream audio and video interactive media programming in the field of entertainment, fashion, sports and current events.”

The application also lists some potential social functions for the app, including the ability to “comment” on songs and albums, share lyrics and quotes, a karaoke function and sending messages and multimedia among users.

While the trademark filing is new to the US, the idea of a TikTok-adjacent streaming service isn’t. ByteDance already has a music streaming app called Resso, which is available in India, Brazil and Indonesia. The streaming app incorporates many of the potential social elements that could be a part of TikTok Music, like sharing lyric images, commenting on tracks and sharing playlists.

According to the Patent and Trademark office, an examining attorney will be assigned to the trademark application approximately six months after the filing date, meaning the application will likely be looked at in early November.

While exact development and release plans for the app are unclear, a TikTok Music app could have a major impact on the streaming industry. TikTok’s short-form videos regularly spell out meteoric fame for songs and musicians, with tracks like Old Town Road by Lil Nas X, Stay by the Kid LAROI and driver’s license by Olivia Rodrigo all becoming viral sensations on the app before charting on Billboard. With in-app integrations between TikTok videos and the music playing, TikTok could have an easy in to the music streaming customer base.

In addition to competition with streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, a TikTok music app could also rival YouTube’s prowess. Despite a smaller share of paid YouTube Music subscribers than rivals, YouTube still dominates in terms of usage for music streaming, with the service being a primary destination for music videos. YouTube remains the second most popular website in the world, just behind Google, with more than 13 billion visits to the website in 2021. With full-form musical content, a TikTok music app could potentially become a destination for artists and users to search music videos.

TikTok and ByteDance didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.