Taylor Swift Gets the Royal Treatment from TikTok — ‘Exclusive’ In-App Experience Launches to Promote New Album

Taylor Swift hasn’t just brought her music back to TikTok, which today launched a multifaceted in-app experience to promote the artist’s new album. Photo Credit: TikTok

It turns out Taylor Swift hasn’t just re-added her music to TikTok, as the video-sharing app has launched a multifaceted “in-app experience” to promote the 34-year-old’s latest album.

TikTok reached out this morning with word of the marketing initiative, complete with “exclusive and first-of-its-kind features.” As most know, Universal Music Group (UMG), the owner of Republic Records, pulled its artists’ works (and, owing to compositional considerations, the works of many non-UMG acts) due to a licensing dispute with TikTok.

Although this confrontation looks to be heating up, Swift, to the surprise of UMG execs, went ahead and brought her body of work back to TikTok shortly before today’s release of The Tortured Poets Department.

Now, with the lengthy project officially live on streaming platforms, it’s become clear that Swift’s TikTok pact doesn’t solely cover her music’s availability. Predictably, given the Universal Music confrontation, TikTok described each component of the partnership in detail as part of its formal release on the subject.

At present, TikTok is supporting “interactive features” including The Tortured Poets Department playlists (with 30-second snippets of the appropriate songs) and “challenges to unlock exclusive artwork” for profiles.

Also included in the campaign are “a fan-exclusive TTPD icon across” the For You feed, hashtag featured-post opportunities, unique animations based on the album, and “a custom Taylor Swift share image” that, as its name suggests, accompanies content shared with others.

Beyond TikTok’s release on the matter, a cursory glance at the relevant offerings shows that a hub for the album further encompasses prompts to follow Swift and Taylor Nation, create videos mentioning or containing tracks from The Tortured Poets Department, and save these songs to standalone streaming options like Spotify using “Add to Music App.”

Of course, that Swift and TikTok are leaning into an effort to promote the album seems to underscore the platform’s marketing reach and broader influence. Whether the points (and especially the former) can help the service overcome its mounting problems remains to be seen.

In the music space, those problems are the threat of possible DMCA-related litigation from UMG and a potential wider industry dispute. Bigger picture, legislation that would compel ByteDance to sell or shut down TikTok in the U.S. – the app has described the bill as an outright ban – appears to be gaining momentum in Congress.

While TikTok is all but sure to challenge the bill in court if it becomes law, the remainder of April (the NMPA’s TikTok license is set to expire on the 30th) will be significant for the app in more ways than one.

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