TikTok lures songwriters with new promotional features

TikTok is adding new features to its app to let songwriters highlight their works. These features, rolling out in beta, include a “Songwriter” label and a new tab on their profile to show off their musical works. This can help songwriters market themselves better to potential clients.

The company said a limited number of publishing partners and songwriters have access to the new label and the music highlight section. Songwriters and publishers who want to be part of the program will have to join a waitlist for now.

TikTok said that it surveyed over 870 songwriters and interviewed a bunch of them to understand their needs on social media in relation to profile building and the creation of monetization opportunities. The company also pointed to an independent survey, which indicated that more than half of songwriters who use social media to promote their profile use TikTok to do it. The Bytedance-owned apps said that the outcome of these surveys drove the decision to build these features.

“We are passionately committed to supporting songwriters at TikTok, which is why we built these tools to celebrate and elevate songwriters and their work on our platform,” TikTok’s Global Head of Music Publishing Licensing and Partnership said in a sentence.

“TikTok is unique in its ability to offer songwriters a way to highlight their musical works alongside their own content, helping them to tell stories about their music, their craft, and their lives, and to raise their profile and build their audience on TikTok, as hundreds of thousands of artist creators already do.”

Notably, Spotify has been releasing features to let songwriters highlight their work for years now. Last year, Tidal went beyond just highlighting songwriter works and launched a tool to track their royalties and manage their work for which they have songwriting credits.

While TikTok decided to shut down its music streaming service TikTok Music last year, the platform still remains important for users to discover new music and for artists to promote their tracks. Earlier this year, the company released a TikTok for Artists tool to let artists monitor the performance of their campaign and tracks.