With a billion users, TikTok has rapidly become one of the most important players in the music industry, and now has its sights set on revolutionising the way artists are discovered and get paid.
Tolga Akmen | Afp | Getty Images
TikTok recently launched a new rival to music-streaming giants Spotify and Apple Music, as the popular short video app seeks new avenues for growth.
TikTok Music said on Wednesday that it will be testing its service in Australia, Mexico and Singapore. That announcement comes shortly after it launched in Indonesia and Brazil earlier this month.
Last week, TikTok also announced an expanded licensing agreement with Warner Music Group, as it looks to grow its music content library. Parent company ByteDance also recently scrapped the free tier of Resso, another music-streaming service it owns.
While these efforts are in their early days, analysts said TikTok has key advantages that other music-streaming entrants do not possess and that could help it seize market share.
“There’s already this large installed base of users which TikTok can convert into paying TikTok Music subscribers – with a relatively low customer acquisition cost,” said Jonathan Woo, senior research analyst at Phillip Securities Research.
According to DataReportal, Indonesia and Brazil are TikTok’s second- and third-largest markets, behind only the U.S., with 113 million and 84.1 million active TikTok users aged 18 years and above, respectively. Meanwhile, Mexico is TikTok’s fourth-largest market with 62.4 million TikTok users.
There really is not that much incentive to switch services for users already on Spotify or Apple Music as brand loyalty amongst users on these premium incumbent platforms is also very strong.
Jonathan Woo
Senior analyst, Phillip Securities Research
“TikTok Music will make it easy for [users] to save, download and share their favorite viral tracks from TikTok,” Ole Obermann, global head of music business development for TikTok, said during the Indonesia and Brazil launch.
TikTok is the second-most common source of music discovery for 16 to 19 year olds, behind YouTube, according to data from MIDiA Research shared with CNBC. MiDIA Research is a U.K.-based research firm covering entertainment and media.
If you are already in the ecosystem, and you are using TikTok that much, you might be willing to switch over.
Tatiana Cirisano
Music analyst, MiDIA Research
In MiDIA’s fourth-quarter consumer survey, 48% of respondents said YouTube is among their main places for discovering music, while 41% pointed to TikTok. The survey fielded 9,000 respondents across the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, South Korea and Brazil.
“A lot of times people hear lots of different songs on TikTok, but they don’t make the jump to actually listen to it elsewhere or learn more about the artist,” said Tatiana Cirisano, music analyst at MiDIA Research.
“The powerful potential for TikTok Music is that it could close that gap,” said Cirisano.
Some market share
The music streaming market is currently dominated by Swedish giant Spotify and Apple Music.
Spotify commands almost 31% of the global streaming market with Apple Music following with 13.7%, according to the International Music Summit Business Report 2023.
But Cirisano said that heavy TikTok users could convert into TikTok Music users if they are using other services such as Spotify. “If you’re already in the ecosystem, and you’re using TikTok that much, you might be willing to switch over,” said Cirisano.
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Still, Woo of Phillip Securities Research said TikTok Music presents a “low risk” for Spotify and Apple Music.
“I do think that it would be quite difficult to surpass Spotify and Apple Music in terms of market share given their incumbency, but TikTok Music could definitely eat into some of it,” said Woo.
“There really is not that much incentive to switch services for users already on Spotify or Apple Music as brand loyalty amongst users on these premium incumbent platforms is also very strong,” said Woo.
He added that monthly subscription prices for all three services are expected to “be at similar price points.” In Indonesia, Spotify Premium costs 54,990 Indonesian Rupiah ($3.66) monthly while iOS users pay 49,000 Indonesia Rupiah ($3.26) a month for TikTok Music.
“As a consumer, why should I pay a monthly fee to listen on TikTok Music, when I can listen for free on Spotify, albeit with advertisements?”
TikTok declined to comment on TikTok Music’s expansion plans. Spotify and Apple Music did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
Boost growth?
TikTok has been looking for growth outside the U.S., where it faces mounting political headwinds. Its flagship app was banned in Montana, the first state to do so, as well as India. TikTok’s CEO previously said the company will pour “billions of dollars” into Southeast Asia over the next few years.
The company’s e-commerce marketplace TikTok Shop has been aggressively expanding into Southeast Asia, competing against Sea‘s Shopee and Alibaba‘s Lazada. Those e-commerce efforts also include livestream shopping.
TikTok in July said livestream shopping isn’t the only area it is looking into when asked if it is the “end destination” for TikTok’s areas of expansion.
“Shoppertainment is not the only destination, but it is definitely one of the main areas, especially in Asia Pacific that we are leaning in heavily into,” Shant Oknayan, head of business across Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa & Eastern Europe at TikTok, said during a summit in Jakarta earlier this month.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the rapid rollout of generative artificial intelligence means the company will one day require fewer employees to do some of the work that computers can handle.
“Like with every technical transformation, there will be fewer people doing some of the jobs that the technology actually starts to automate,” Jassy told CNBC’s Jim Cramer in an interview on Monday. “But there’s going to be other jobs.”
Even as AI eliminates the need for some roles, Amazon will continue to hire more employees in AI, robotics and elsewhere, Jassy said.
Earlier this month, Jassy admitted that he expects the company’s workforce to decline in the next few years as Amazon embraces generative AI and AI-powered software agents. He told staffers in a memo that it will be “hard to know exactly where this nets out over time” but that the corporate workforce will shrink as Amazon wrings more efficiencies out of the technology.
It’s a message that’s making its way across the tech sector. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff last week claimed AI is doing 30% to 50% of the work at his software vendor. Other companies such as Shopify and Microsoft have urged employees to adopt the technology in their daily work. The CEO of Klarna said in May that the online lender has managed to shrink its headcount by about 40%, in part due to investments in AI and natural attrition in its workforce.
Jassy said on Monday that AI will free employees from “rote work” and “make all our jobs more interesting,” while enabling staffers to invent better services more quickly than before.
Amazon and other tech companies have also been shrinking their workforces through rolling layoffs over the past several years. Amazon has cut more than 27,000 jobs since the start of 2022, and it’s announced smaller, more targeted layoffs in its retail and devices units in recent months.
Amazon shares are flat so far this year, underperforming the Nasdaq, which has gained 5.5%. The stock is about 10% below its record reached in February, while fellow megacaps Meta, Microsoft and Nvidia are all trading at or very near record highs.
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), on the day of Circle Internet Group’s IPO, in New York City, U.S., June 5, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group has applied for a national trust bank charter, moving forward on its mission to bring stablecoins into the traditional financial world after the firm’s big market debut this month, CNBC confirmed.
Shares rose 1% after hours.
If the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency grants the bank charter, Circle will establish the First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A. Under the charter, Circle, which issues the USDC stablecoin, will also be able to offer custody services in the future to institutional clients for assets, which could include representations of stocks and bonds on a blockchain network.
Reuters first reported on Circle’s bank charter application.
There are no plans to change the management of Circle’s USDC reserves, which are currently held with other major banks.
Circle’s move comes after a wildly successful IPO and debut trading month on the public markets. Shares of the company are up 484% in June. The company is also benefiting from a wave of optimism after the Senate’s passage of the GENIUS Act, which would give the U.S. a regulatory framework for stablecoins.
Having a federally regulated trust charter would also help Circle meet requirements under the GENIUS Act.
“Establishing a national digital currency trust bank of this kind marks a significant milestone in our goal to build an internet financial system that is transparent, efficient and accessible,” Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said in a statement shared with CNBC. “By applying for a national trust charter, Circle is taking proactive steps to further strengthen our USDC infrastructure.”
“Further, we will align with emerging U.S. regulation for the issuance and operation of dollar-denominated payment stablecoins, which we believe can enhance the reach and resilience of the U.S. dollar, and support the development of crucial, market neutral infrastructure for the world’s leading institutions to build on,” he said.
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Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta shares hit a record high on Monday, underscoring investor interest in the company’s new AI superintelligence group.
The company’s shares reached $747.90 during midday trading, topping Meta’s previous stock market record in February when it began laying off the 5% of its workforce that it deemed “low performers.”
Meta joins Microsoft and Nvidia among tech megacaps that have reached new highs of late, all closing at records Monday. Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Tesla remain below their all-time highs reached late last year or early this year.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been on an AI hiring blitz amid fierce competition with rivals such as OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet. Earlier in June, Meta said it would hire Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and some of his colleagues as part of a $14.3 billion investment into the executive’s data labeling and annotation startup.
The social media company also hired Nat Friedman and his business partner, Daniel Gross, the chief of Safe Superintelligence, an AI startup with a valuation of $32 billion, CNBC reported on June 19. Meta’s attempts to buy Safe Superintelligence were rebuffed by the startup’s founder and AI expert Ilya Sutskever, the report noted.
Wang and Friedman are the leaders of Meta’s new Superintelligence Labs, tasked with overseeing the company’s artificial intelligence foundation models, projects and research, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. The term superintelligence refers to technology that exceeds human capability.
Bloomberg News first reported about the new superintelligence unit.
Meta has also snatched AI researchers from OpenAI. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, said during a podcast that Meta was offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million.
Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s technology chief, spoke about the social media company’s AI hiring spree during a June 20 interview with CNBC’s “Closing Bell Overtime,” saying that the talent market is “really incredible and kind of unprecedented in my 20-year career as a technology executive.”