Recently, Business Insider disclosed ByteDance's "T-Tok" filed in the United States Music" trademark application proposal. The proposal was originally submitted in Australia in November 2021 and again in the United States in May 2022.

It is reported that the most important potential use case for the trademark is an application. The platform includes content such as "music, podcasts and live videos", allowing users to buy, play, share and download music, songs, albums and lyrics, as well as create, share and recommend playlists, comment on music, and podcasts.

The move was seen by many media as T-Tok's challenge to Spotify. As the US press commented: "T-Tok is working tirelessly to make all your favorite apps obsolete, first Facebook, then Instagram, then Spotify." "

So, after becoming the world's most popular short video app, why does T-Tok also do music streaming? It will become Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music's rival? And, where will T-Tok Music stand for ByteDance?

T-Tok also does music streaming?

As of now, it is unknown when the T-Tok Music app will go live, or even if it will go live. But in the eyes of many in the industry, T-Tok Music is not just a trademark, but represents the next phase of ByteDance's strategic layout.

American Media Business Insider had requested either T-Tok or ByteDance to comment on the trademark request, but had not received a response. To that end, Insider interviewed a number of experts in trademark law, according to experts, to file a trademark in the United States, you need to prove that it is actually using the trademark for a specific service or that it is related to the marketing intent of an existing product.

"Typically, companies the size of T-Tok or ByteDance will only file trademark applications for projects they are seriously considering." Josh, trademark attorney at Gerben Law Firm Gerben said in the interview. In other words, T-Tok's trademark application is not just to preempt a spot, but to actually have potential projects under construction.

This is also supported by T-Tok's recent job advertisement. T-Tok is hiring T-Tok Music's back-end software engineer, said in the announcement that the team's "mission is to build empathy and inspire expression through music, and is responsible for products including Resso and T-Tok." Music and SoundOn", and defined T-Tok Music as "the same music app for Gen Z as Resso." "

Meanwhile, T-Tok's Singapore branch had previously filed a patent with the United States. The patent states that "the invention enables users to easily acquire, listen to and manage music on portable mobile devices" and calls the patent "Music." Station"。

Coincidentally, the patent originally belonged to a British B2B digital music company called Omnifone. The company sold the asset to a mystery buyer in May 2016, and 6 years later the mystery buyer surfaced and apparently it was T-Tok.

predictably, T-Tok The application of Music can not only cover the basic functions of online music services such as listening, sharing, and downloading, but also include the corresponding podcast services, which highly overlap with Spotify's music services. What's more, T-Tok Music also includes features such as creating playlists, posting songs and podcast comments, as well as song sharing, related comment sharing, karaoke, user private messages, etc., which also makes T-Tok Music achieves functional differentiation from Spotify.

When people think of T-Tok's long-standing threat to Youtube and Instagram, T-Tok will now launch an independent music streaming service T-Tok in the United States Muisc, many practitioners believe Spotify and Apple Music will have the strongest competitors.

What are T-Tok's second-half odds?

After T-Tok brought Old Town Road to the world and helped Lil Nax X reach the pinnacle of his career, T-Tok's strong influence on music content has long been recognized in the industry.

According to T-Tok According to the 2021 Music Annual Report, about 430 songs were played more than 1 billion times on T-Tok in 2021, three times as many as in 2020 (176). At the same time, more than 175 songs that became popular on the platform finally reached Billboard Hot 100 list.

Therefore, in the official introduction of T-Tok, it is not only a "short video platform", but also a "music discovery application". As early as 2020, ByteDance launched its music streaming app Resso in India, Brazil and Indonesia; In February this year, it launched the music streaming app Soda Music in the Chinese market.

As you can see, both Resso and Soda Music have "T-Tok." Music" trademark application documents described the same function, currently, the song page on D tone also has a "one-click heart" to divert soda music. When users listen to BGM they are interested in, they can go to their own music streaming platform to listen to the full version of the song with one click. Such a smooth operation avoids T-Tok's situation of "making wedding clothes for others" all the time, and also keeps users in the ByteDance ecosystem.

As the preferred platform for discovering and promoting music, T-Tok/D sound has proven its value for streaming media, such as Spotify Viral The top 50 charts and the hot song lists of domestic music platforms have always had no shortage of music from T-Tok.

The one-click jump and direct music mode has also received a lot of popularity. According to a person familiar with the matter to The As of November 2021, Resso had more than 40 million monthly active users in India, Brazil and Indonesia, according to Information. This year, Business Insider's report shows that in India alone, Resso's monthly active users grew by 304% between January 2021 and January 2022; Spotify's users in these countries grew by just 38 percent over the same period.

After exponentially growing its active users, Resso continues to be attractive in the app store's window. According to analytics firm Sensor Tower, it was available on the app from January to May this year The app was downloaded 42.3 million times on Store and Google Play, up 19% year-over-year.

It's clear that Resso has given T-Tok a successful experience in music streaming. A former ByteDance employee told Tech Crunch that they had previously considered ending with "T-Tok." Music" has brought the service to more markets, and has been focusing on mature markets such as the UK and Australia.

In the European and American markets, T-Tok's layout in the music track is to start with distribution services, rooted in its own advantages in music discovery and music promotion, and launched the music promotion and distribution platform SoundOn in March this year, allowing artists to directly upload their music directly to T-Tok and Resso, as well as distribute to other platforms such as Spotify 、Apple Music and Instagram.

In August, T-Tok also announced the addition of a "pre-release" feature to SoundOn's distribution service, allowing music to post clips of songs to SoundOn before they are officially released on other platforms, in order to gain insight into fan acceptance and prepare songs for promotion.

Obviously, the current layout idea of T-Tok in the field of music is consistent with the path of D tone power music, which is from music promotion to music distribution, musician services, and then further expanded to streaming media services, forming a complete closed loop of music consumption.

How will T-Tok Music affect the music streaming market?

On the one hand, social attributes will become T-Tok A weapon in Music's hands. For a long time, the music streaming function in mature markets in Europe and the United States has been positioned more like a music retrieval application that can be listened to, and users' usage habits have always been independent of each other. And through T-Tok to meet the social needs of users, T-Tok Music may open up a new paradigm.

Video platforms, on the other hand, went to the music streaming service, Youtube Music's experience seems to prove the fact that "it's easy to launch a product, it's not easy to threaten Spotify." YouTube, the world's largest online video site, was YouTube after years of operating its own music streaming service Music's share of global streaming music customers is only 8%, slightly higher than NetEase Cloud Music's 6%. However, what needs to be seen is that the market that NetEase Cloud Music faces is only China, YouTube The market for Music is global.

So, for T-Tok For Music, there are still blessings and misfortunes ahead. But from the perspective of the entire music streaming market, we will see Spotify "leave" from the mature market and aggressively conquer emerging markets, T-Tok Music may replace Resso in the mature market and start a new journey.

One is the global big brother of digital music services, and the other is a strong emerging disruptor. Who will be the final winner and how it will affect the global music streaming service market structure is destined to be a big drama.

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