Tiktok Music closes
Tiktok Music will not be rolled out in more countries, but will be discontinued. There will be peace and quiet at the end of November.
Tiktok Music will soon be finished.
(Image: Daniel AJ Sokolov)
Bytedance is discontinuing its music streaming service Tiktok Music, which was originally called Resso. The service will therefore never have been on the market in German-speaking countries. It will end on November 28.
This is according to a statement on the Tiktok Musics website. In India, Resso had to close a few months ago due to an official order. Bytedance initially launched Resso in India and Indonesia in March 2020, followed by Brazil a few months later. This made the service available to around 30 percent of the world's population outside China. There was a free version financed by advertising and a subscription version.
Last year, Resso was renamed Tiktok Music in Indonesia and Brazil and also launched in Australia, Mexico and Singapore. But on January 31, 2024, the service was hit by a double whammy: the license with Universal Music expired and India banned the Resso application from the Google and Apple app stores. India is constantly banning Chinese apps that are said to threaten the country's sovereignty. Bytedance's much better-known video streaming service Tiktok has been banned in India since 2020.
Google users automatically get their money back
Although Tiktok now has a license for works from Universal Music's catalog again, India, the world's most populous country, is missing from its portfolio in the long term. In addition, the high licensing costs make it difficult to earn money with music streaming without the market power of YouTube, which can constantly raise the subscription prices for YouTube Premium (including YouTube Music).
New subscriptions for Tiktok Music can no longer be taken out with immediate effect. Subscriptions can be canceled at any time until November 28, when they will be deactivated on the server side. Anyone who has taken out a longer-term subscription via Google Play will automatically receive a refund. However, affected Apple users must apply for a refund by November 28 at the latest. Any playlists can only be exported until October 28.
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