TikTok Establishes New Deal with UnitedMasters To Promote Independent Musicians

TikTok is looking to further solidify its links to the music industry, this time via a new partnership with United Masters, which is a key distribution platform for independent artists.

The new partnership will see TikTok given access to UnitedMasters’ full catalog of music, which will ensure greater exposure for UM musicians, while also providing commercial opportunities for artists via TikTok's Commercial Music Library.

As per TikTok:

“UnitedMasters has already helped launch the careers of emerging artists like BigXThaPlug, Anycia, Tobe Nwigwe and FloyyMenor, whose top hit song, ‘Gata Only,’ has been streamed over a billion times, was announced as TikTok’s #1 Song of the Summer globally, and won the Billboard Global 200 Latin Song Music Award. With the success of ‘Gata Only,’ millions of users across continents created TikTok videos to the song – leading to billions of views and further expanding his global reach as he enjoyed a multi-week run atop the charts.”

The deal will help to ensure more artists get opportunities in the app, while also reinforcing TikTok’s position as a key platform for music promotion and amplification.

And TikTok is already a key platform in this respect.

The platform has sparked a range of music trends, boosting new artists, and reinvigorating older ones, leading to major spikes in revenue for record labels. Indeed, some publishers have even changed their artists’ song names to better align with TikTok trends.

A  TikTok-commissioned report published last November showed that TikTok users are significantly more likely to both discover and share new music content in the app, while 75% of its users also find new artists via TikTok clips.

So in terms of music discovery, TikTok is already a key destination, and partnerships like this further solidify those links.

TikTok also established a similar partnership with DistroKid earlier this year, another key platform for independent artists. The broader concept here is that if TikTok can play a role in their success early on, that will further align them to the app, while also helping musicians reach more people with their music.

It’s a smart move by TikTok, adding more music, and building stronger connections in the industry.