TikTok announced the “ultimate Taylor Swift in-app experience” on Friday (April 19), a way to “connect Swifties with exclusive and first-of-its-kind features.”
TikTok certainly isn't the only platform joining Swift in promoting her new release, Department of Tormented Poets. Many iHeartRadio stations album-tortured-poets-department-iheartradio” target=”_blank”>played the whole album the moment it came out (plus a song from it at the top of every hour), for example, while Spotify launched a three-day “library-themed art installation” to celebrate the album in Los Angeles.
What's different about TikTok's announcement: The platform is embroiled in an ongoing licensing dispute with Universal Music Group, Swift's distribution partner. Because the two sides couldn't come to an agreement, official recordings by UMG artists have been (mostly) removed from TikTok. Swift's music has been absent for a while, but a large chunk of it resurfaced on the platform last week.
Now, not only can the superstar bypass UMG's TikTok embargo, but she also gets additional promotional help from the platform. “With multiple innovative features, fans can dive into the album with playlists to create, as well as challenges to unlock exclusive artwork for their profiles and the chance to be featured in a Fan Spotlight carousel,” the TikTok announcement notes.
This is guaranteed to make some UMG artists—those who have developed devoted TikTok followings or had success marketing music on the platform in the past—jealous. “TikTok is primarily used as a tool to discover new music — discover a clip on TikTok, listen to it on a DSP,” said a music lawyer Advertising sign Last week. “So people trying to discover their music are more concerned” about not being able to push new songs to the app.
Because of this concern, some artists with viral hits are trying to find solutions to allow their songs to remain on TikTok.
Swift's TikTok collaboration, despite UMG's ban, was a demonstration of her power in the music industry, as an artist who moves as many units in a year as some entire label divisions. There was considerable speculation about what her return to the service meant — whether it implied a carve-out in her contract that allowed her to do a direct transaction with the social platform, or whether her original contract always contained such a provision. With today's news, some aspects of that deal have come into greater focus, in terms of the promotion and marketing push that TikTok is providing for the new album.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/business/tech/taylor-swift-tiktok-promo-campaign-1235661359/