How TikTok plans to further disrupt the music industry

New data shows that TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have become a serious threat to more-established western rivals.

Number-crunching by Sensor Tower showed the upstart start-up, which only launched in 2016, has now hit a total of 1.5 billion downloads on the App Store and Google Play.

It only hit the one billion milestone in February, and has already outpaced Instagram, generating 614 million downloads in 2019.

That’s 6% more than where it was this time last year.

At the same time, ByteDance is gunning for Spotify and Apple Music by planning to launch its own music streaming service before the year’s end, according to the Financial Times.

With one billion active monthly users for its dozen apps, it’s in a powerful position as it negotiates to license deals with the big three majors – Universal, Sony and Warner.

The news of discussions earlier this week saw shares of rivals Spotify and Tencent drop.

Facebook has already responded by creating a short-form video app called Lasso and marketing it in countries where TikTok does not have a presence, and Instagram recently began testing a TikTok clone feature called Reels in Brazil.

TikTok and ByteDance have proven to have a wide global footprint already.

The Sensor Tower’s breakdown shows that the fastest growth for TikTok is coming from India, which made up 31% of this year’s downloads.

China was responsible for an estimated 173.2 million downloads, while the US comes in at third place with around 123.8 million.

Australia’s ranking was not noted by Sensor Tower.

It’s currently the third most downloaded non-gaming app of the year, behind WhatsApp at #1, with 707.4 million installs, and Messenger at #2 with 636.2 million.

It ranks above Facebook at #4 with 587 million and Instagram at #5 with 376.2 million.

In-app spending reached a new peak of $115.3 million in 2019. Chinese users accounted for close to 50% of the total spend with a calculated $84.5 million. The US with $62.4 million and Great Britain with $6.9 million.

Reports are that with a number of US lawmakers accusing TikTok of acting as a spy by passing on its western user data to the Chinese government, ByteDance is considering whether to change the app’s name and move its base to Singapore.

It has officially denied both.