A new TikTok study signals to the music industry that its app is a friend, not a foe

• A new TikTok report reveals a variety of ways in which its users interact with music.
• For example, the study found that TikTok users were more likely than average listeners to attend concerts.
• The report focuses on how TikTok assists artists, labels, and streamers in making money.

TikTok has evolved into a go-to platform for music fans looking to discover new songs. According to a new report TikTok commissioned from entertainment-analytics firm Luminate, its users are also more likely than the average listener to attend live concerts and pay for music streaming apps.

Throughout the report, which TikTok sponsored, the authors highlight areas where the company is increasing revenue for its music industry partners, many of whom are looking for new ways to extract value from the app. The company has long had to strike a balance between maintaining relationships with record labels and other rights holders and looking for new ways to profit from the music business.

“This report will focus on how TikTok users’ engagement with artists and their music is associated with higher streaming volumes, while also identifying distinctive consumer behaviors that make TikTok users uniquely valuable to the music industry,” the authors of the report wrote.

The majority of the findings indicate that TikTok will help artists, record labels, and other music stakeholders make money, whether through concert sales, merchandise, or streams.

In the UK, for example, 45% of TikTok users said they’d attended a live music event in the previous year, compared to 35% of all music listeners. In the United States, the margin was narrower: 38% of TikTok users said they had attended a live music performance in the previous year, compared to 33% overall.

TikTok’s ability to drive users to concerts will be put to the test next month in Mesa, Arizona, when the company hosts its first global in-person music event. The TikTok in the Mix concert will feature headliners such as Cardi B and Charlie Puth, as well as performers from the company’s artist-incubator program, Elevate.

In general, attendance at live music events has increased this year. In an October report, UTA IQ, the talent agency’s research division, and Variety’s intelligence arm discovered that one in every five live-music attendees between the ages of 15 and 69 had increased their concert attendance since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Among millennials, this figure has risen to one in every five.

Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, and Drake have generated a lot of buzz with their 2023 tours, and video snippets or hand-held livestreams from those events have become fairly common on TikTok.

The survey, conducted by TikTok and Luminate between the third quarters of 2022 and the third quarter of 2023, included approximately 10,000 respondents over the age of 13 from the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, and Brazil. In those two countries, TikTok has a music-streaming app.

Aside from live events, Luminate and TikTok discovered that the app’s user base was contributing to the music industry in other ways. As an example:

• In the United States, 62% of TikTok users pay for a music streaming service, compared to 43% of all surveyed consumers.
• 45% of TikTok US users reported purchasing merchandise such as t-shirts, stickers, or other items from artists, compared to 35% of all listeners.

The willingness of TikTok users to pay for music streaming could be good news for the company as it seeks to expand TikTok Music subscriptions in new markets such as Australia, Singapore, and Mexico. TikTok also recently introduced a new feature that allows users to connect songs they hear on TikTok to streaming services such as Spotify and Amazon Music.