🔵 The hidden genius of TikTok's new Artists feature for musicians

Handy for artists, but there's arguably a much smarter play going on here

Hi there -

TikTok has today unveiled a new suite of tools for music artists. This will provide a home page of sorts for artists, allowing users who discover artists’ music via user-generated content a means to learn more.

Songs can be promoted, forthcoming tracks hyped, and there’s even a “behind the song”-type feature allowing artists to expand on a track of their choice. Crucially, there is also a means to link out to DSPs, providing a means for a fan discovering an artist to jump straight out to Spotify, Apple Music etc.

For the artist then, this is quite a handy set of tools to further drive connection with fans. On that front, most would undoubtedly see this as beneficial to musicians, I would think.

What about TikTok though? How does it stand to benefit?

This, to me anyway, is where the cleverness of this move really presents itself. Previously, users could not link directly out to a song. From a data analytics perspective, these would be counted merely as exits, with the destination unknown.

By adding in buttons for all the DSPs, TikTok will gain further insight into who is clicking where. In doing so, it gets to profile users and which DSPs they use. I’d argue that is handy insight to have, especially when you are a platform looking to launch your own music service. It also creates a landing page to drive people to TikTok’s own music service, whenever it launches, allowing a crucial connection point.

If Spotify, Apple Music and other DSPs have an Achilles Heel, it is that they only provide music (or “audio” if we factor in podcasts etc). Repeated efforts to break into the video market have been largely unsuccessful

TikTok, on the other hand, is a social broadcast platform, and undoubtedly experiences significantly more active engagement than any DSP. That shouldn’t be a shock: any audio platform will struggle for actual eyeballs on content, because they are not necessary to consume the core product

Imagine, then, if TikTok were to launch its own music platform. Changing these DSP links to instead prioritise its own music service - almost certainly involving some kind of reduced-price bundle - would be a fine way to drive a convenient solution for fans, and develop a serious competitor in the music space at the same time.

YouTube Music (and YouTube Premium) may well be the canary in the coalmine here. Based on its last reported user numbers - 80M premium subscribers, an increase of 30 million in just 13 months as of November 2022, suggests that a ‘blended’ account involving ad-free YouTube and access to the Music product has proven compelling. Although I cannot cite a specific source, my recollection is that a significant portion of this growth occurred among younger audiences, a fact which would surely have any other DSP worried.

It doesn’t feel like a huge leap in logic, therefore, to assume that this is what TikTok has in mind as well. Right now, I would not bet against them succeeding either.

For DSPs, I would imagine the longer-term threat of sorts here is the “water as utility” kind of mindset. Ironically, it is the DSPs that contributed to that even existing in the first place, given you’re paying a flat fee for unlimited access.

As we move into this world where socials become a broadcast medium, one has to wonder if music’s long term prospect is just to get bundled into a broader entertainment product. Amazon has Prime. YouTube has Premium. Apple has Apple One. TikTok will surely launch some kind of bundled product.

Where does that leave Spotify?

Have a great weekend,

D.

🎶 listening to “Let It Burn” by Goat. Sounding like an outtake from Black Sabbath’s Volume 4 classic, with a female vocal replacing Ozzy (though coming pretty damn close), this might sound somewhat unoriginal. I care not a jot: the song is a stone cold classic. Play LOUD.

📺 watching “Does Mixing Matter?”, the teaser video for Jack Stratton of Vulfpeck’s mixing masterclass. I have no desire to mix music like Vulf, but I’m still sorely tempted to buy this course purely because Stratton is just to entertaining to watch. Brilliant - check it out.

🤖 playing with Custom GPTs to create interactive music manuals. Things like Bitwig and U-He’s Diva synth have incredibly detailed manuals - 60 pages or more. With a custom GPT, I can create an interactive version, allowing me to simply ask how I can do something and have the GPT figure out the response from the manual. Amazing. (If you have a GPT+ account and want to try either out, here’s the Bitwig one and here’s the Diva one.)

Stories from the Music Industry:

TikTok leans further into music with new Artist Accounts for musicians

Artists will need to have at least four songs uploaded to be eligible for the tag. TikTok is also launching a “New Release” tool for Artist Account holders. This feature was first trialed in the summer by BTS to promote their single Take Two, but is now being rolled out widely as part of the new accounts. The promo tool allows artists to highlight a new track for up to 14 days before release, and for 30 days after release. The tag also highlights a New Release on discovery pages of catalog sounds, which TikTok says, allows artists “to drive further discovery of new music”.

👆🏻Hot take: I really like these features. They make a huge amount of sense (both for artists and TikTok alike) and feel more directly actionable than much of what I’ve seen on DSPs.

Spotify made £56m profit, but has decided not to pay smaller artists like me. We need you to make some noise

Why not pull our work off Spotify, I hear you saying? There’s another reason we need help from our fans. In the US at least, labour laws are such that artists cannot organise a mass removal of our work from a platform. Nor can we advocate that you, the consumer, stop using the platform in any coordinated fashion. Were we to do so, it is we – the artists – who could be sued by the platform for unfair business practices. You got that right. We are classified as suppliers for the streaming platforms. And coordination between suppliers in business is collusion, not organising, as it would be if we were classified as labour.

👆🏻Hot take: Damon Krukowski’s op-ed for The Guardian clearly explains the issues here. His point regarding musicians’ inability to unionise in the US is certainly a worrying one.

Sony Music has issued nearly 10,000 deepfake takedowns… and other things we learned from Dennis Kooker’s speech about AI

Kooker told Senators that “based on recent Copyright Office filings it is clear that the technology industry and speculative financial investors would like governments to believe in a very distorted view of copyright”. He added: “[That view is] one in which music is considered fair use for training purposes and in which certain companies are permitted to appropriate the entire value produced by the creative sector without permission, and to build huge businesses based on it without paying anything to the creators concerned.”

👆🏻Hot take: some great insights here. The principles being proposed feel like some of the more cogent and direct ones I’ve seen.

Europe’s artists and labels could lose $137m annually to US recorded music rightsholders if EU law isn’t changed, trade groups warn

What the failure of the “reciprocity” principle means in practice: US-based artists whose recordings are played on the radio in the EU will be able to collect performance royalties, while EU artists will continue to get nothing from their recordings being played in the US.

👆🏻Hot take: this feels like an oversight and something that should be corrected. It just doesn’t make sense otherwise.

Spotify Wrapped 2023: 'Music genres are now irrelevant to fans'

Bronx drill, ambient lo-fi and gym phonk were the three biggest growing genres on Spotify in 2023. As these micro-categories become increasingly specific, Sanneh says the concept of genre could cease to exist in the streaming era, but communities will continue to matter.

👆🏻Hot take: IMO this reflects the assertion by Kriss Thakrar in a recent Midia article that genres are dead, being replaced instead by identity-driven scenes.

Stories from the Broader World of Tech:

Meta faces more questions in Europe about child safety risks on Instagram

The latest Commission request to Meta comes hard on the heels of a report by the WSJ that suggests Instagram is struggling to clean up a CSAM problem it exposed this summer — when it reported Instagram’s algorithms were connecting a web of accounts which were being used for making, buying and trading underage-sex content. In June, following the WSJ’s exposé, the EU warned Meta it faces a risk of “heavy sanctions” if it doesn’t act quickly to tackle the child protection issues.

👆🏻Hot take: I get the distinct sense that governments around the world finally have the stick with which to beat Meta. This feels like it could deal a heavy blow to the business as the fines being suggested are biblical.

Elon Musk hurls defiant, profanity-laced retort at fleeing advertisers

Video of the interview, which was widely circulated, showed that Musk said, “Don’t advertise,” on Wednesday during an on-stage interview at an event in New York. “If someone’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself.”

👆🏻Hot take: childish and petulant. Please just let Twitter die already - I genuinely believe the world would be better without it.

Stability AI could be sold after investors express concerns

Investment firm Coatue Management, which co-led Stability AI’s $101m funding round in 2022, reportedly sent a letter to the company’s senior management this October expressing its concerns. Given the size of that funding round, it would be a huge surprise if Stability AI was in financial trouble. But developing generative AI models at its scale is an expensive business and many of its rivals have very deep pockets, so exploring a sale – whether prompted by its investors or not – is less of a surprise.

👆🏻Hot take: the timing of this is certainly interesting relative to the exit of Ed Newton-Rex recently. Proof that not all AI startups are guaranteed unlimited backing.

Need something else to read? Here you go:

Fans are celebrating The Pogues' infamous putdown of Laurence Fox

One social media user called the tweet "among his finest work"

👆🏻Hot take: RIP Shane McGowan. This is a chef’s kiss of a putdown that I couldn’t resist including here.

Return to office is dead, Stanford economist says. Here’s why

“Return to the office is dead,” Nick Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University and expert on the work-from-home revolution, wrote this week.

👆🏻Hot take: I was pleasantly surprised to read this take, as the pervading narrative - albeit one that reeks of spin on behalf of the office real estate industry - is that more and more people are returning to the office. Not so, according to this.

Who am I and who are Motive Unknown?

I’m Darren and I’m the MD of Motive Unknown. I started the company back in 2011. Since then we’ve grown to a team of 20, representing some 25 indie labels in the marketing strategy space, as well as working with artists directly.

Our artist clients cover anything from top-tier pop (Spice Girls, Robbie Williams) through hip hop (Run The Jewels, Dessa), electronic (Underworld, Moby) and more. Our label clients take in Dirty Hit (The 1975, Beabadoobee) Partisan Records (IDLES, Fontaines DC), Domino Records (Arctic Monkeys, Wet Leg), Warp Records (Aphex Twin, Danny Brown), LuckyMe (Baauer, Hudson Mohawke), and Lex Records (MF DOOM, Eyedress) among others.

Recent recorded music clients to join the family include Because Music (Christine & The Queens, Shygirl), Dangerbird (Grandaddy, Slothrust) and London Records (Bananarama, Sugababes).

In addition to our recorded music division, we also have a hugely successful growth marketing division which has a strong focus on the music creation space. Our clients in this space include Beatport, Plugin Boutique, Loopmasters, UJAM, RoEx, Krotos, Rhodes and more.

Click here to visit our website.

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