Will ByteDance Create a Spotify Like App?

TikTok’s ByteDance Acquires Music Tech AI Startup Jukedeck

ByteDance has a unique intersection of youth apps and musical.ly viral hit TikTok. This means with the right funding (Softbank Vision Fund), it can in theory create more music inspired apps for its lush retention of GenZ and younger global teen audiences.

Cloning a kind of Spotify or Tencent Music like app makes the most sense. ByteDance is making the acquisitions that would naturally lead up to that point. In 2019 we saw the rise of TikTok with musically inspired user-generated-content that outshone all other kinds of micro video.

TikTok managed to create an inspirational channel that has captured the imagination of an entire generation. For young users, it appears music is truly the key!

There’s no doubt in my mind, ByteDance will take on Tencent Music and Spotify.

TikTok acquired musical.ly and the rest is, well, history.

User-video platform TikTok is becoming a very well known quantity to the music industry, having helped break artists and tracks like Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road.

Its parent, Bytedance, which is heavily rumored to be creating a Spotify-rivalling audio streaming service, announced last month that it now reaches more than a billion monthly active users globally via TikTok and other services.

What does it all mean? It means TikTok could be the next YouTube for musical talent and ByteDance will take on Spotify (SCMP) to entrance global teens even more. And it could work.

A key change is in the works for Jukedeck, a pioneering AI startup out of the U.K. which was building technology to create music-using AI — including the ability to interpret video and automatically set music to it — and is going over to ByteDance.

ByteDance is a pioneer in apps that integrate smart technology and entertain people with creative immersive stories that border on memes. As of April, 2019, the global startup is the world’s most valuable unicorn with a valuation of US$76 billion.

If Music rules the world of teens, ByteDance has a plan.

Tiktok itself hit one billion global app downloads in February, according to global market monitor Sensor Tower, with nearly 100m in the USA and 250m in India.

This video is already a bit out of date, but a good intro nonetheless (Bloomberg).

• Jukedeck had raised ￡2.5 million, largely from Cambridge Innovation Capital, but which also included investors Parkwalk Advisors, Backed VC and Playfair Capital, the most recent investors (CrunchBase).
• The deal was announced July 23rd, 2019 and guess what? Jukedeck specializes in …? Yep, creating royalty-free music for user-generated online videos. Nice one!
• During October 2018, TikTok was named the most downloaded app in the USA. Since then, there have been many viral videos generated by the application’s user base, and most of them have been based around copyrighted music. Jukedeck’s tool could help users sync their videos to the beat more easily.
• Global teens are already pivoting from stories (IG style) to more entertaining 15-second micro-videos integrated with better smart technology.

The era of video and news aggregation personalized to users is showing a new kind of super app is emerging.

This in terms of app development won’t just replace News feeds but also the Story-based feeds Facebook thinks is the next big thing.

The news, first reported by Music Ally, was given away by the fact that many of JukeDeck’s senior management team have switched their employer details on LinkedIn.

Founder and CEO Ed Newton-Rex changed his LinkedIn profile recently to say he’s been working for TikTok’s parent company ByteDance as director of its AI Lab since April of this year. Clearly, ByteDance has a masterplan that’s making Facebook look for older people.

Can ByteDance really compete with Tencent Music and Spotify?

Time will tell but their hold on global teens is undeniable. This could be the most Gen Z orientated company we’ve ever seen in the world of apps. Far surpassing Snap Inc. already, for example.

I predict ByteDance eventually will be the company that invents the iOS for the future of mobile devices in China that takes off.

They may also start their own mobile device line. By targeting the 90s-born consumer, ByteDance can create the trends of tomorrow for global young people who are today (in 2019) under 25.

ByteDance is creating a content paradise of younger Gen Z and older Alpha generation. Their suite of apps will certainly be among the most sticky apps of the 2020s.

The sky is the limit for music-inspired apps made by this innovative company that integrates smart tech with a profound understanding of user retention and the GenZ demographic.

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