What is TikTok?

What exactly is TikTok? ??

TikTok is one of the most popular social apps in the world, having been downloaded over 1.5 billion times. TikTok was launched in 2017 by ByteDance, which is a Chinese IT corporation specializing in machine learning. ByteDance also runs Douyin, which is TikTok’s version in Mainland China. Its front-facing experience for users is nearly identical to TikTok, but its back-end may differ, in order to comply with the PRC’s censorship laws.

TikTok's format

TikTok is comparable to Instagram in some ways. Users can record and post short videos of themselves (now up to 60 seconds in length) playing and lip-syncing to songs. They can share these videos on their account, and also find vast numbers of videos on other users’ accounts or main pages, or by using TikTok’s search page. So, it is exclusively focused on short-video clips that feature the person recording --more restrictive than Instagram.

TikTok’s effect

If one views Instagram as being a more youth-dominated and faster-paced platform than Facebook, then consider TikTok as going even further, given TikTok’s explosive growth, and in making content and artists go viral even more quickly. TikTok has been tweaking its main offering: its new ‘Clips feature’ lets users record segments of videos into a single Story of up to 60 seconds (previously, users were limited to 15 seconds), multiplying the potential virality that artists have to work with. Unlike Instagram, TikTok does not yet have wide-ranging UGC licences in place for the music on its service, leading to handwringing from labels and other industry players who feel conflicted by that, given the enormous potential TikTok has proven to have in boosting new artists (the massively popular “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X first gained attention on TikTok). This intense virality has spread to songs that aren’t even new, including an instance where a random fan’s decision to tweak a trending “meme” video with another song leading to a surge for that particular artist. 

Tiktok’s problems

Yet as mentioned, those same industry players that have seen their music spread much more widely, have not been directly compensated for that. It may still pay off in some ways like with Lil Nas X, who views TikTok only as a promotional tool. That strategy saw the rise of Old Town Road’s record-breaking success, leading to Lil Nas X signing to Columbia Records. Sueco, another artist, got a similar boost in May. So while TikTok has initiated licensing negotiations with labels since early 2019, this current loophole for rightsholders has sparked multiple ongoing legal battles, including one at the UK’s Copyright Tribunal, involving several European collecting societies. The music industry will watch the Tribunal’s ruling with keen interest, given the precedent-setting outcome it may have. The debate in China around how to monetize Douyin for artists has led to ideas of partnering with China’s big three telcos, among other suggestions. Despite this music-licensing instability, some distributors are adding TikTok to their list of monetized platforms. Independent music distributor DistroKid now lets artists upload their music directly to TikTok, allowing independent artists to easily put theirs on.

TikTok’s other set of problems are likely more concerning for foreign governments. ByteDance’s full name is “Beijing ByteDance Technology Co Ltd.”, highlighting its ties with the PRC. It remains headquartered in China, and continues to dominate Mainland China’s media landscape with a range of apps, including Toutiao, a news-gathering algorithmic feed that’s reminiscent of Twitter. ByteDance’s investment in AI (most notably machine learning) has likely fuelled the popularity of its suite of apps, as its technology learns how to better catalogue and act on the data each user emits. When ByteDance launched Douyin outside the PRC, they chose to rebrand it to “TikTok”. While being essentially the same app in the ways an average user would interact with it, ByteDance maintains that the back-end of both apps are arranged differently and stored separately. This is done to follow the PRC’s strict censorship laws within Mainland China, which that government has reinforced for new platforms like Douyin. However, it is not clear how complete the separation of both platforms’ back-ends are, while it is clear that this censorship is seeping into TikTok. TikTok’s tens of thousands of new moderators appear to be acting beyond the scope of the standard “hate-speech and uttering threats” censorship that platforms like Facebook hire moderators for. On Sept 25, The Guardian chose to publish an article in its ‘News’ section (not its ‘Opinion’ section) that claims ByteDance “is advancing Chinese foreign policy aims abroad through the app,” in reference to TikTok and Douyin. While all data within Douyin’s platform is known to be under the surveillance and control of the PRC government, it is unknown how much of the content and data within TikTok follows this fate, although this mounting evidence suggests that at least some of it is.

An interesting contrast to ponder: while much of the debate around the PRC’s effort to expand its influence abroad has centred on Huawei Technologies, ByteDance has been able to grow, within months, a global platform of over 500 million (many of whom are impressionable young users), that is willingly fed massive amounts of information by said users, all while maintaining relatively positive coverage in Western media. 

TikTok’s next steps

There are signs that TikTok is developing its music discovery muscle. In April, it launched its TikTok Spotlight initiative for promoting unsigned artists in Japan and South Korea. Musicians upload their tracks to a dedicated channel on TikTok where they get promoted in a featured playlist and shared with users for content creation. TikTok Spotlight will showcase two rounds to determine the top songs, with 10 artists offered production opportunities. Companies backing the program are Sony Music labels, Universal Music, Warner Music Japan, and TuneCore Japan. TikTok may try to copy the Spotify for Artists program-- which let artists upload songs directly without paying distributor fees. Of course, this future growth may not happen if concerns around ByteDance’s close links to the PRC government grow. Regardless of whether there is much concern, ByteDance continues to enter the Western media landscape in new ways (among other examples as well).