TikTok’s plan to dominate the music streaming world with its subscription service, TikTok Music, has officially flopped. Once dubbed a “Spotify killer,” the Chinese-owned platform has announced it will be shutting down TikTok Music worldwide by November 28. The service, which had been live in five regions (Indonesia, Brazil, Australia, Singapore, and Mexico), failed to gain traction, proving that TikTok's brand might not be as unstoppable as it seems.
The shutdown marks another example of how streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music have successfully warded off competition. TikTok has now shifted focus to its ‘Add To Music App’ feature, which allows users to save tracks they find on TikTok to playlists on actual streaming platforms, rather than directly competing with them.
This latest failure highlights a broader issue in the digital age: streaming platforms have steadily devalued music since Napster’s early days. TikTok may have made tracks go viral, but real artists still rely on Spotify and Apple Music to make a living. TikTok’s flashy brand, often criticized as a Chinese psy-op, simply wasn’t enough to take on the streaming giants.
For all its hype, TikTok Music is now just another casualty in a landscape where true value in music has been lost, reduced to mere clicks and viral trends.
