TikTok will soon let you stream entire songs in its app through a new integration with Apple Music. The company’s new Play Full Song feature makes it possible to link your Apple Music account to TikTok, and play any song you like while scrolling directly in the app.
Starting a song is as easy as tapping a button on the sound description page or your For You page. Assuming you pay for Apple Music, TikTok will open a streamlined version of Apple’s music player, which you can use to listen to the song, save it for later, or add it to a playlist.
TikTok says Play Full Song is built using Apple’s MusicKit API, which lets developers feature elements of the Apple Music streaming service in their apps. TikTok has previously offered integration with several music streaming services through a feature called Add to Music App, making it possible to save songs listened to on TikTok to your streaming library. What’s particularly interesting about this new integration is that because it’s using Apple’s API, songs streamed with Play Full Song count as normal streams for artists in Apple Music, so they don’t lose any money.
Along with the new feature, TikTok and Apple are also introducing a way for fans to listen to live music with their favorite artists. TikTok’s Listening Party feature creates a live “shared environment” where people can listen to music and interact directly with artists, which effectively feels like an audio-only livestream. TikTok livestreams are an entire ecosystem in themselves, and Listening Party appears to be a way to leverage the same technology for a more controlled, music promotion-focused end.
TikTok is already a popular tool for discovering music and launching the careers of new artists, and the platform even briefly dabbled in offering its own streaming service in 2023. The company abandoned those plans in 2024, but under new owners, TikTok’s ambitions could eventually become even bigger than just offering good integration with existing streaming services.
TikTok says Play Full Songs and Listening Parties are rolling out worldwide “in the coming weeks,” so if you don’t see a feature right now, you may soon.
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