businessinsider.com
Congress passed a bill this week that will force TikTok’s owner to sell its US assets or face removal from mobile-app stores. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law on Wednesday. Parent company ByteDance now has between 9 months and a year to sell or spin off the app in the US.What comes next will be an all-out legal battle.TikTok has vowed to “move to the courts,” where it plans to challenge the law as “a clear violation of the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans on TikTok…
10 days ago
businessinsider.com
Taylor Swift is back on TikTok.The pop star’s music, along with tracks from hundreds of other artists like Drake and Olivia Rodrigo, was pulled off the app at the end of January amid a contract dispute between her record label Universal Music Group and the ByteDance-owned company. The purging of songs later expanded to Universal Music’s publishing arm, hitting a wide swath of performers around the world.The move has been particularly troubling for artists who are releasing new music this year. T…
22 days ago
businessinsider.com
The music industry is always adapting to new technologies.Innovations in streaming, audio production, and artificial intelligence can change the nature of the business at a moment’s notice.Some companies lower the barrier to entry for music creation by releasing easy-to-use song-making apps. Others automate processes once reserved for professional engineers, such as the process of mastering tracks, lowering costs for up-and-coming artists. And a new crop of AI companies are experimenting with au…
30 days ago
businessinsider.com
It’s annual review season at TikTok, and the company is putting the squeeze on some employees by doling out harsher performance ratings.Some staffers who were previously told their work met expectations at their mid-year review, referred to internally as an “M” rating, are now receiving lower ratings of “M-” and “I,” suggesting their work isn’t up to par, two current TikTok employees told Business Insider.At TikTok, a rating below “M” can mean a reduction in one’s annual bonus, or losing a bonus…
about 1 month ago
businessinsider.com
TikTok is coming after Google’s businesses, and it wants its users to help.The company’s new creator rewards program, announced Monday, incentivizes creators to post longer videos and optimize their content for search. By asking creators to prioritize those two factors, TikTok may be able to ratchet up its early efforts to compete with Google’s search engine and video platform YouTube.To qualify for payments in the new program, a creator’s video must be over one minute long, a requirement that T…
about 2 months ago
businessinsider.com
TikTok is facing the threat of a ban or forced sale — again.The US House of Representatives voted Wednesday on a bill that would require its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the US version of TikTok or see it pulled from app stores outright.Since August 2020, when the Trump administration first tried to box out TikTok via executive order because of its owner’s ties to China, the company has faced an onslaught of attacks from state and federal politicians. These ban attempts haven’t sto…
about 2 months ago
businessinsider.com
In 2022, after TikTok had established itself as hit-making machine and key promotional tool for music, a wave of artists began complaining they were burned out on making content for the app.“TikTok has now become a whole other part of our job that takes up such a significant amount of time,” performer Taylor Upsahl told Business Insider in June 2022.At the time, if an artist wasn’t gung-ho about filming social videos, their manager or record label could turn to other marketing tactics. Some hire…
about 2 months ago
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It’s no secret that social media has become a major part of the artist and song promotion playbook.Short-video apps like TikTok and Instagram have become the center of many of those efforts, given that hundreds of millions of people now discover new music by scrolling through feeds.TikTok, in particular, has revolutionized how users discover not just new songs and artists but old ones too. Decades-old tracks like Matthew Wilder’s “Break My Stride” have experienced a resurgence after trending on…
2 months ago
businessinsider.com
Step aside Charli D’Amelio and Khaby Lame. TikTok has a new type of influencer on its mind: the shopping star.The company wants to prop up influencers on its app that are uniquely gifted at selling goods. Its “Star Creator” team focuses on finding and developing influencers who can drive sales in various product categories on its e-commerce tool, TikTok Shop, according to two sources who work with Shop-focused talent. It’s hiring for several new roles in the US and UK for the group, including a…
2 months ago
businessinsider.com
Paul Hourican, TikTok’s global head of music partnerships and programming, is leaving the company, the executive confirmed to Business Insider.Hourican joined TikTok around four-and-half years ago in London as an executive heading up the company’s UK music operations. From there, he jumped into a role overseeing its European music operations before expanding into a global leadership position on the music team.In his global role, Hourican oversaw music initiatives like the company’s December “Tik…
2 months ago
businessinsider.com
TikTok scored a victory this week, as President Joe Biden finally caved and joined its app.The move was an about-face for the president, whose administration had spent years calling it a national security risk. The White House had pushed for a sale of TikTok’s US assets. Now, Biden is posting “Dark Brandon” memes on the app like other TikTokers.The president’s arrival on TikTok is the latest win for the company, which has used the courts, political lobbying, and its CEO’s charm to ward off polit…
2 months ago
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TikTok and Universal Music Group are at an impasse in their fight over song licensing.After their existing contract expired last month, tracks from popular artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift are off the app, with more set to be removed from UMG’s publishing catalog at the end of February. TikTok has muted existing videos featuring the delisted songs, with no immediate resolution to the business dispute in sight.But for music marketers tasked with helping artists and new releases go vir…
3 months ago
businessinsider.com
Creator+, a film studio and pay-per-view app that raised $12 million in 2021 to produce movies starring digital talent, is in talks to sell various aspects of its business, from its technology to its completed films and other IP, cofounder Benjamin Grubbs confirmed to Business Insider in a statement.The company began winding down operations at the end of last year, a source familiar with the matter told BI.Creator+’s business launched in 2021 and aimed to produce six feature films that year that…
3 months ago
businessinsider.com
Music licensing talks are heating up between TikTok and Universal Music Group as negotiations have left the conference room and entered the public sphere.UMG, the label behind Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande, published an “open letter” on Tuesday, claiming a range of grievances against TikTok. It accused the app of being “flooded with AI-generated recordings,” allowing a “tidal wave of hate speech, bigotry, bullying and harassment,” and “selectively removing the music of certain of our developing…
3 months ago
businessinsider.com
TikTok is on the rise as a search tool, particularly among Gen-Z users.The app isn’t close to challenging Google’s search dominance (the companies have even partnered together). But as a video-first app, TikTok may be better suited for certain visual-leaning queries.A new Adobe Express survey, conducted in August by brand-engagement firm Fractl, examined what makes search different on TikTok and what its users typically look for.The company asked 808 US-based respondents what search apps they tu…
3 months ago
businessinsider.com
The creator economy has lost its focus.Startups once leaned heavily into the concept as they fundraised on the premise that offering services for TikTok, YouTube, and Substack creators could create billion-dollar businesses. In most cases, that hasn’t proven out.Some creator companies have flubbed their stock market debuts, resorted to layoffs, or closed up shop altogether as fundraising in the category dropped significantly between 2022 and 2023. For instance, Peeq, a service for creators to ch…
4 months ago
businessinsider.com
TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is shutting down its music-streaming app Resso in India at the end of this month, a company spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider.The move comes after the Indian government demanded in December that Apple and Google remove Resso from app stores.“Unfortunately, owing to local market conditions, we can no longer continue to serve users of Resso in India,” a ByteDance spokesperson told BI. “We have therefore taken the decision to shut down Resso and its associ…
4 months ago
businessinsider.com
News and information company Thomson Reuters is considering licensing some of its content to companies that build generative artificial-intelligence tools, Bloomberg reported on Monday.The company’s top executive said Thomson Reuters is “open-minded” about working with large-language-model, or LLM, providers.“We’ve been in discussions with a number of those providers,” the company’s CEO Steve Hasker told Bloomberg.Thomson Reuters offers products across various sectors, from its legal research to…
4 months ago
businessinsider.com
“Mean Girls” arrived at No. 1 at the North American box office this weekend, earning $28.7 million in its first three days and $33.2 million for the four-day stretch into the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, according to studio estimates.The film, a musical remake of the 2004 Tina Fey comedy of the same name, was a clear hit among females and 18- to 34-year-old moviegoers who represented the bulk of its opening weekend viewers, the Associated Press reported.But the studio’s decision to deemphasiz…
4 months ago
businessinsider.com
Social media is a pivotal piece of the music-marketing playbook in 2024.Apps like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram can help songs get discovered and allow up-and-coming artists to find new fans. Established artists and legacy tracks can also reemerge into the mainstream if they end up going viral on social media.Much of this happens organically, as users independently opt to add songs to videos or share them with friends. But marketers also go to great lengths to seed tracks to users, either by hi…
4 months ago
businessinsider.com
Fishing content creator “Joel-O Shotz” built an audience of around 10,000 followers on the app by livestreaming himself fishing in open lakes, rivers, and creeks. He started making money on the app by offering fishing baits through TikTok Shop, selling around 92 strawberry- and sweet-corn-flavored “little bitz,” for instance.But lately, TikTok has slapped the seller with a series of violation claims that have made it harder for him to sell on the app. In repeated notices, he was told that he inc…
4 months ago
