TikTok Music, once considered a strong contender in the music streaming landscape, is set to shut up shop. The service will be discontinued on November 28 in the five markets it has been available in: Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, and Singapore.

The official reason provided by TikTok is that the social media platform aims to concentrate on forming partnerships with established digital streaming platforms.

Sources at TikTok indicate that the decision to shut down TikTok Music is closely tied to the Chinese company’s strategy of collaborating with music streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music. Rather than competing with these platforms, TikTok aims to boost music consumption through them by leveraging its own influence and user base.

“Our Add to Music App feature has already enabled hundreds of millions of track saves to playlists on partner music streaming services,” Ole Obermann, Global Head of Music Business Development, TikTok, was quoted as saying by the Music Business Worldwide website.

TikTok Music officially launched in Indonesia and Brazil last summer, licensed by all three major music companies. In these regions, the app replaced Resso, a long-running music subscription service from ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company.

TikTok Music, along with its predecessor Resso, faced a challenging journey, particularly due to the absence of key music catalogues from major labels. Moreover, there was a noticeable lack of updates or reports regarding its growth or success, which raised questions about the platform’s performance.
A subscription-only digital streaming platform may have been too ambitious for TikTok as users may have been hesitant to transition from their streaming services. Also, music rights holders might prefer TikTok’s role as a driver of streams to other platforms rather than a direct competitor. Whether it is one of these factors, a combination of some of them, or something else, TikTok Music is set to close in just over two months.