TikTok partners with streaming service Audius

Audius is a consumer blockchain music streaming app, and the deal makes the platform one of the first music streaming services to partner on TikTok’s new feature. TikTok says users will get to work directly across both platforms in “less than a minute.”

“We’re proud to be one of the earliest launch partners for TikTok Sounds and to give the artists on Audius a chance to increase their exposure even more,” Audius co-founder and chief product officer Forrest Browning said. “We have a great community and we’re thrilled to give them easy access to share their music to TikTok Sounds.”

Audius boasts more than 100 000 artists including big names like deadmau5, Diplo and Disclosure. The platform recently reached 5 million monthly active users. The service was founded in 2018 and is driven by an open-source community of artists, fans and developers globally. It allows artists to share new music and monetise streams directly. It also works like a white-label product by offering developers the option to build their own apps on top of Audius’ and gives them access to unique audio catalogues.

Launched in May, TikTok Sounds is available on desktop and mobile. The move adds to TikTok’s growing focus on music.

“As TikTok becomes increasingly engrained in culture, more third-party apps across a variety of categories and use cases are looking to tap into our community on their own platforms,” TikTok global head of distribution partnerships Isaac Bess said. “Through the Sound Kit and Login Kit for TikTok, we're providing seamless integration solutions that help developers expand their reach, increase exposure for creators and empower our community to showcase their content on other platforms.”

In July, TikTok published a report that shows the app becoming a major music discovery platform, with more than 75% of its users in the US discovering new artists through the service and about 67% saying they are more likely to look for songs on streaming platforms after hearing them first on TikTok. The Chinese-owned app is nearing a billion monthly users and recently became the first mobile app apart from Facebook to reach 3 billion downloads globally.