Can TikTok Beat Spotify and Apple Music?

Digitally China

Together with Jonas Leijonhufvud and Sven Carlsson, the authors of a new book telling the inside story about Spotify and the fight for global dominance in music streaming we are discussing if ByteDance actually have a shot at beating the giants.

ByteDance, the company behind the huge International success TikTok, or Douyin as its called in China is really on the offense. Fueled by the position as the 3rd most downloaded app in the world 2018 and a valuation of 75 billion dollars, ByteDance have recently both announced plans to enter messaging to directly compete with Tencent and Facebook as well as launching a smartphone.

And now, reported first by Bloomberg ByteDance seem to have far advanced plans on getting into music streaming to compete with Spotify, Tencent Music and Apple Music. Already positioned among hundreds of millions of teens around the world with a short video and music app - this actually doesn’t seem that crazy.

In this episode of Digitally China we are discussing:

• TikTok’s current position on the market
• The challenges of monetizing through music streaming, learnt from Spotify and Apple Music
• How music streaming companies work with record labels and how that would impact TikTok’s ambitions
• The validity of TikTok’s presumed music streaming service and how their position among teenagers around the world could support that

Host: Tom Xiong

Producer: Jacob Lovén

Guests: Jonas Leijonhufvud and Sven Carlsson, reporters at Dagens Industri and authors of the book Spotify Untold

Digitally China is a subjective but independent depiction of the tech scene in China. Audio clips used in the podcast have not been distorted nor taken out of context and are included for commentary and educational purposes and thus shall be considered “Fair Use”. Digitally China is powered by RADII (www.radiichina.com), an independent media platform exploring China from all angles.

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