TikTok's Music Experiment Comes to an Abrupt End

For about a year now, TikTok has been experimenting with having a dedicated, subscription based, music app that where users can stream music directly. The app integrated right into TikTok so users can get music from their favorite videos as well as from major labels.

The app soft launched in Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Australia, and Singapore last summer. With three million downloads in its first three months, it looked like TikTok Music will become a big headache for the big streamers as soon as it lands in the US.

But it didn't...

After a big release that saw the app downloaded by more than a million users in its first two months, downloads started sliding. That's pretty expected for any app, but in TikTok's case, the sliding didn't stop.

By September, however, downloads dropped 35% to 781K and in October, TikTok Music's downloads took a big hit, dropping a whopping 48% to just 403K - a third of where they were at launch.

While there was some growth between October and February, every other month since has seen a decline in downloads. This month will be TikTok's worst as downloads are predicted to drop below 100K for the first time in the app's short life.

What a run for an experiment!

But... According to our App Intelligence, TikTok Music was downloaded 7.2M times since launch and earned Bytedance $2.7M of net revenue from the App Store and Google Play, which contributed nearly even shares. Like downloads, the last few months have not been great for TikTok music's revenue, which declined consistently every month.

Did TikTok Music fail, or was there something bigger at play?

In its announcement, TikTok said it's still focused on making it easy for its users to access music through an option to launch songs from videos in their favorite streaming app, making me believe the shutdown wasn't a result of the lack of growth but rather a business move to fortify its relationships with labels and streaming apps as opposed to battle them.