Photo credit: Eyestetix Studio
TikTok has begun expanding its music content investment team, aiming to acquire and manage music content, even as it faces a possible ban in the United States.
Now that TikTok has become the de facto place for musicians to go viral and turn a hobby into a full-fledged career, the ByteDance-owned platform is looking to acquire and manage music content. The company has formed an in-house music content investment team to focus on “partnership or acquisition opportunities in the music content space on a global level.”
The news comes two years after TikTok entered the music distribution market with its artist-focused SoundOn service and began hiring A&R executives with record label experience. Now the company is taking that move to the next level as it plans to move into the highly competitive music acquisition and management market.
The music content investment team will be based in Los Angeles, New York and San Jose, at least according to the postings currently circulating. According to new job ads posted by the company, the investment team will focus on copyright in addition to music companies. TikTok's open roles include music content investment manager, music content investment lead and music copyright product manager.
TikTok's new team will work with the platform's music content strategy and operations teams to evaluate market opportunities, execute partnership and acquisition projects, and “perform detailed financial analysis and valuation of music content and related assets that will help shape the future of TikTok's music business.”
The strategy makes sense as an evolution of the platform's SoundOn service, which distributes independent artists to TikTok and other services: Rather than pumping artists into popularity and then handing them over to record labels or Spotify, TikTok may want to make bigger profits and retain control over artists' blossoming careers.
But if TikTok starts acquiring music copyrights and long-term licenses, will it encourage competing platforms to do the same? Meta's Instagram and Google's YouTube have more experience in the social media game, but TikTok is quickly eating away at their market share, so it's hard to imagine other platforms shifting their strategic focus.
And there's still the unresolved question of whether TikTok could be banned in the U.S. But the company's expansion into the music business and expansion into its U.S.-based office seems to suggest it's not too worried about that.