It appears that there could be a scaling back of music usage on the short form platform TikTok, as the company is currently testing among some users located in Australia which will restrict the capacity that they can add music to their clips, according to Bloomberg.
Per the report, “TikTok is limiting the number of songs that users can post on its app, an experiment to assess how much they value music in their videos. Content creators won’t be able to use certain songs, the company said in a statement.”
The report goes on the speculate that TikTok is aiming to put a dollar amount value on their use of music with the app, and thus use that in negotiations, as some sort of bargaining angle, with music publishers in the future, which will surely be a headline for short form content news as it plays out.
TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has sought to negotiate lower payments on music usage within their platform, arguing that music is not as crucial to the TikTok experience as publishers suggest it is.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out for the future of the app, and for the short form content creators that use it, especially for income.
