News that Bytedance will shut down its 18-month old TikTok Music on-demand music streaming service might have come as a surprise to some people. After all, TikTok has over 1 billion monthly active users globally and singlehandedly redefined music discovery by turning generation of smartphone users onto music-based, short-form videos.  

But TikTok Music’s demise was entirely predictable. Building a sustainable on-demand music streaming service is incredibly challenging. The digital music graveyard is littered with streaming products that didn’t last — remember Rdio, Boinc, Guvera, Turntable.fm or SpiralFrog? Not even a well-funded platform from a corporate giant is guaranteed of success. Sony’s Music Unlimited didn’t last. Nor did Microsoft’s Zune. Xiami, founded by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, shut down in 2021 after 12 years.  

Bytedance’s uphill road was made more difficult when it took on a different role with TikTok Music. TikTok was an insurgent that built itself without the typical constraints facing typical streaming services. The app created a new use case for music in the same way the download succeeded the CD and streaming succeeded the download. TikTok Music, on the other hand, was constrained by the licensing terms that govern on-demand services.  

As a result of those rules, Bytedance built something more like Spotify than TikTok because it didn’t have any other choice, says MIDiA Research’s Mark Mulligan. “TikTok Music had massive potential to be these so many things that didn’t look anything like any other [digital service provider],” he says. “But they still ended up having to make something that looked pretty much like any other streaming service.” 

That TikTok Music resembled every other music streaming service was a problem, Mulligan argues, not a solution for a new market entrant. On-demand music has become a well-functioning utility like water service, he explains, but one that doesn’t build communities, drive fandom or create conversion — things TikTok does well and TikTok Music couldn’t. “We all really value the water that comes out of our taps, but we rarely go down to the local bar and talk to our friends about how great the water is that comes from taps,” says Mulligan.  

These aren’t just any utility companies TikTok Music has been competing against. Market leader Spotify, with its $76 billion market capitalization, is far smaller than the next three companies, Apple, Google and Amazon. These four companies, and even smaller ones like them, have spent years pouring resources into building products and features that keep people listening to music, podcasts and, in the case of Spotify, audiobooks.  

TikTok is great at creating engagement, too, but getting people to listen to full songs is different than feeding them a never-ending series of 15-second video clips, says Vickie Nauman, founder of CrossBorderWorks, a music tech and consulting and advisory firm. “You can’t necessarily translate that to something else.”  

Things might be different if TikTok Music could differentiate itself on catalog by offering music not available on other music platforms. That’s how it works with on-demand video streaming. But global music services have, more or less, the same catalogs. Offering the world’s music has long been part of the music subscription service’s value proposition. So, music streaming services instead compete against one another on their user experiences.  

On-demand services “had to make [the user experience] so elegant, so intuitive, and really, really customize it to consumers,” Nauman explains. In her experience, people underestimate the difficulty of creating a great product and executing the technology that underpins it. “It’s incredibly challenging,” she says. “Not only the user experience,” she continues, but the technology required to manage many tens of millions of tracks. “I think a lot of companies just really misperceive it.” 

Changing consumer habits was always going to be a problem, too. It would be presumptuous to think anybody with a TikTok app would become a TikTok Music subscriber. Not every iPhone owner subscribes to Apple Music even though Apple offers a free trial to new iPhone owners and bundles the music service into a money-saving package, Apple One. Even though Alphabet owns both the Android operating system and YouTube, not every Android Phone owner subscribes to YouTube Music.  

“To some extent, I’m not surprised” by TikTok Music’s failure, says MusicWatch principal Russ Crupnick. When MusicWatch surveyed American TikTok users about their interest in a standalone TikTok streaming service, the reaction was “surprisingly low” and “very lukewarm,” he says. (TikTok Music never launched in the U.S.) “Getting most people to switch [subscription services] at this point is a bit of a challenge. You’re more likely to get people to use multiple services.”  

In the U.S., self-pay subscribers — not including free trials — have an overage of 2.3 music subscription services, according to MusicWatch. That includes Amazon Prime, which online shoppers buy mainly for free shipping, as well as satellite radio service SiriusXM. Asking people paying for multiple services to pay for one more music subscription plan is a tall order for a newcomer like TikTok Music. What’s more, MusicWatch found that Spotify ranks behind only Amazon Prime in terms of subscriber passion. When the economy gets rough, Spotify users are relatively unlikely to cancel their plans.   

Zoom out and the demise of TikTok Music reveals something else about the music streaming market. In 2024, the number of global platforms may have reached a steady state and new entrants are unlikely to appear (and, like TikTok Music, any attempts will be unsuccessful). Experts who spoke with Billboard don’t foresee there being another company with both the funding and the stomach to take on the demands of licensing and administering rights for a huge amount of music.  

“We’re at a fork in the road where all of these broad catalog licenses are kind of exhausted,” says Nauman. Gaming companies have the money but don’t need to license entire catalogs, she adds. Fitness companies that had licensed large catalogs now “want simpler solutions.”  

If new entrants are going to find success, says Mulligan, it could be in “regional hubs” in which streaming services can license a smaller amount of local music and focus on markets where Western repertoire is less important. In China, for example, a market dominated by local music licensed by local rights owners, Tencent Music Entertainment has 117 million subscribers and Cloud Music had 44.1 million at the end of 2023 (the last figure the company made available). But regional services are being threatened by the bigger global companies. In some populous markets such as India and the Philippines, dominant Western companies have pushed aside local players.  

In the end, Bytedance doesn’t need TikTok Music to be an influential force in music. Mulligan thinks it’s possible that the “majority” of music activity — not revenue — will happen on TikTok within three to five years. Younger people want to create, not just consume, he says, and TikTok could become a self-contained ecosystem that captures more of its users’ time — at the expense of the kind of on-demand streaming business that Bytedance is now abandoning. 

MarÍa Becerra announced a break from social media on July 30 amid the European run of her world tour. Despite positioning herself at the forefront of Latin pop over the past year — including scoring her first two No. 1s on the Billboard Argentina Hot 100 and selling out River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in record time — the 24-year-old simultaneously needed a hiatus from the scrutiny that she, and many of her peers, face online every day.

“I understand that social media is necessary for our careers,” she says. “But the limit is reached when they start taking away my joy.”

Why did you decide to take a social media break?

It was doing me wrong to read so much hate — I was really affected by comments that only had the intention to harm [me]. The attack on women’s bodies who are part of the [music] scene is constant: If I’m too skinny, if I’ve had a boob job, if I train too much, how I do my makeup, how I dress… We struggle internally trying to please everyone without losing our own identity. Do you know how draining that is? Then, I said, “Enough. I’m tired, this hurts.” Instead of enjoying a tour that I dreamed so much about, I was suffering because of someone who writes from behind a screen.

What advice would you give to artists who feel similarly?

I’m currently in the process of learning to take care of myself. Going to therapy is beneficial for me; it helps me to think about what my limits are, what I want to share about my private life and what I want to keep for myself. I am a public figure, and those who listen to my music expect to know about me and see me beyond the shows. With my team, we seek a balance so that this ecosystem functions.

How could the entertainment industry better support artists?

I don’t know if [the problem] is the music industry. Everything I said before about what’s expected of female artists affects our self-esteem and puts an overexertion [on us] that ultimately generates a very large emotional imbalance. But the social media phenomenon has produced something where everyone needs to give their opinions. People express whatever they want, whenever they want, and while I greatly respect freedom of speech, this has turned into both a personal and social compulsion.

What can be done to create more open discussions on this topic in the industry?

The problem is not about talking; it’s what we do about it. How do we raise awareness of what is going on? What tools do people have to ask for help? I have the privilege of being able to pay for a psychologist, a health plan. But what about young people who are victims of cyberbullying and have no one to turn to? Who helps them? Talking about this in the media with responsibility could be a start, but I don’t have the formula. I’m just now learning to take care of myself and protect myself, and all of that is a long process.

This story appears in the Sept. 28, 2024, issue of Billboard.

New Music Latin is a compilation of the best new Latin songs and albums recommended by Billboard Latin and Billboard Español editors. Check out this week’s picks below.

Rauw Alejandro & Mr. NaisGai, “Pasaporte” (Sony Music Latin/Duars Entertainment)

On the heels of making his MTV debut, Rauw Alejandro delivers the third single off of his upcoming fifth studio album Cosa Nuestra. “Pasaporte” in collaboration with his longtime producer Mr. NaisGai is a groovy, funk-infused dance track that best captures the carefree and adventurous era that Rauw’s in. “If I don’t answer/ I’m doing my own thing, send me a text/ My life is a movie, everyday I post photos and videos,” he smoothly chants. Honoring the title, which means passport, the music video captures Rauw dancing in a private jet and hanging out with his celebrity friends David Guetta and The Martinez Brothers in Ibiza. “Pasaporte” follows his singles “Déjame Entrar” and “Touching the Sky,” all part of his forthcoming set out November 15. — JESSICA ROIZ

Rosalía feat. Ralphie Choo, “Omega” (Columbia Records)

From its first steely guitar strums to Rosalía’s unmistakable vocal timbre with occasional flamenco-styled claps, “Omega,” featuring Ralphie Choo, captures vulnerability and strength. The texture, reminiscent of ‘70s power ballads, is both pristine and piercing. The song evokes nostalgia and delivers goosebumps, especially when the Spanish superstar intones “Sentimental” with raw emotion. “The more you move away/ Everything about you reminds me of you,” she sings poignantly. Released on her birthday, “Omega” is a celebration of completeness and true connection — captured in the line, “Tú eres mi omega,” signaling “you are my end-all.”  — ISABELA RAYGOZA

Shakira, “Soltera” (Ace Entertainment/Sony Music Latin)

Shakira is unapologetically reveling in single life bliss, and isn’t any accepting any sort of negativity surrounding her newfound independence. Powered by a joyful tropical pop tune fused with afrobeats, “Soltera,” which translates to single in English, is really a celebration of life. “I have the right to misbehave. To have a good time. I’m on my own and now I can do what I want to do. It’s good to be single,” the Colombian hitmaker declares. Penned by Shakira and her go-to songwriters, Keityn and Edgar Barrera, the credits also list Bizarrap as a songwriter, making this song an almost certified hit. “Soltera” follows the theme of independence and self-liberation that Shakira showcased in her latest album, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, which scored a Latin Grammy album of the year nomination. — GRISELDA FLORES

Ryan Castro & Hamilton, “A Poca Luz” (AWOO Corp.)

In a first collaborative effort, Ryan Castro reeled in newcomer Hamilton for “A Poca Luz.” Produced by The Prodigiez, the track steers away from Castro’s signature Medellín perreo sound and navigates through the chill rhythms of Amapiano Afrobeat with suave house beats. The track introduces the blissful musica proposal by Hamilton — a Cartagena-based emerging act — to a wider scale. Lyrically, it’s a love letter: “I promised the moon that before the sun comes out, she was going to be mine […] my beautiful flower that drives me crazy,” chants Castro. The music video was filmed in El Pozón, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Cartagena that best captures the port city’s rich culture and vibrant people. — J.R.

Daddy Yankee, “Bailando en la Lluvia” (El Cartel Records)

Reggaeton legend Daddy Yankee sends a message of resilience and faith in his new single “Bailando en la Lluvia” (“Dancing in the Rain”). In the song, the reggaetón icon fuses his signature style with a vibrant tropical pop melody, transmitting an invitation to face adversity with optimism and trust in God. “I learned that it’s one day at a time/ One battles or gives up/ You cry in the storm, or you dance in the rain,” goes part of the lyrics. On his social media, the artist shared: “I hope this song fills you with encouragement, strength and invites you to dance in the rain, which means ‘changing your attitude’ in the middle of the storm.” — LUISA CALLE

Listen to more editors’ Latin recommendations in the playlist below:

For the four devout Midwesterners that make up Minnesota indie pop-rock band Hippo Campus, touring through major cities like New York wasn’t always as comfortable as it is for them now more than 10 years into their careers — but they’ve always had their ways of coping.

“I love coming here now,” 30-year-old guitarist Nathan Stocker tells Billboard backstage at the Bowery Ballroom in lower Manhattan, where he and his bandmates were hours away from performing an album-release show Tuesday (Sept. 24). “It used to scare me until I was well into the night, a couple beers deep, just chain smoking. And then it was like ‘Yeah, I love New York!’”

After years of heavy drinking on show nights, Stocker is sober now – and so is the rest of the band, for the most part. There’s still room for some balance; at one point in the show later that night, 29-year-old frontman Jake Luppen asks the crowd to send a shot of whisky to the stage, and when two arrive at the same time, he downs them both as 28-year-old bassist Zach Sutton shakes his head with gentle disapproval. But the quartet’s overall tamer approach to life on the road is just one of many things that’s different about the cult-favorite group in the age of their latest album, Flood, which dropped Sept. 20 via new label Psychic Hotline, having departed Grand Jury Records after their original record deal expired.

Luppen and 29-year-old drummer Whistler Allen, for instance, both own homes back in their home state, and all four members are in committed relationships (Luppen got engaged over the summer). The group is far from the early 20-somethings who dropped Billboard 200-charting debut album Landmark in 2017 and slept on dirty van floors on tour, and even farther from the Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists classmates who first started releasing music together in 2013. Now all pushing 30, Hippo Campus is finally coming out on the other side of years of growing pains, spawned by the natural push and pull of four people who’ve been best friends, bandmates and business partners for more than a decade.

Early in the writing sessions for Flood, they started going to therapy as a group to help parse the big questions – around the same time as which Stocker quit drinking – and a lot of that introspection bleeds into the 13 tracks on the finished product. On the thrashing ode to anxiety “Paranoid,” Luppen sings, “I wanna give this life all that I havе in me,” and on optimistic album closer “I Got Time,” he muses, “If this is as good as it gets I’ll be more than fine.”

But even as they were each evolving in their personal lives, they found that it was difficult to let go of the songs they were making in the two-year period between their last album, 2022’s LP3, and now. On a self-designated mission to make the best Hippo Campus record ever, they got stuck in an endless loop — writing more than 100 songs, recording them over and over, and arranging multiple versions of their fourth album just to scrap them soon afterward. They thought they might’ve cracked it last summer while on the road, until Luppen declared to the rest of the group that, again, it simply wasn’t good enough.

Realizing they couldn’t keep going as they had been, Hippo Campus left Minnesota to record yet another version of the album, this time at Sonic Ranch Studios in Tornillo, Tex. They set a 10-day deadline and, with the help of producers Caleb Wright and Brad Cook — and using everyone from Phoenix to Big Thief, Tom Petty and the Red Hot Chili Peppers as reference points — forced themselves to record their parts simultaneously as they would on stage. No listening back to takes. No repeated attempts. Only forward motion.

The result was a set of existential, self-conscious tracks with the same luminous energy and unpredictable melodies Hippo is known for, reinvigorated by the ease with which the analog instrumentation they adhered to in the studio translates to the stage. As much was evident at their New York show Tuesday night, where they played Flood front to back for a palpably excited audience that was already screaming along to the words of songs that had come out just four days prior. At one point, Luppen stops singing to cough — he recovered from COVID-19 last week, but not before having to cancel the band’s scheduled hometown release shows — but their passionate fans have no trouble taking over lead vocals in his place on anthemic single “Everything at Once.”

With touring serving as their main source of income, the group will stay on the road through February, playing theaters and auditoriums across North America and the U.K. along with one festival show in Bangkok. And their fans will follow. One 22-year-old listener, Abby, was camped outside the 9:00 p.m. Bowery performance since the early afternoon to get as close as possible to the stage for what would be her 52nd Hippo Campus show; the next day, she said she’d be traveling to Washington, D.C. to catch her 53rd.

“It’s so rad,” Luppen says of their fans’ devotion. “It always surprises me that anyone would be down to do that for us. That’s a big reason why we keep going, you know? Those people really believe in it, and that allows us to believe in it.”

Below, Billboard catches up with Stocker and Sutton backstage before their show at the Bowery — followed by Luppen and Allen on Zoom the next day – about growing up, ditching bad habits and the messy beauty of starting over:

What were your initial reactions to Jake saying you needed to scrap years of work and start over on Flood?

Sutton: He was the first to verbalize an emotion we were all feeling. We had to be honest about where we were in the process and where we wanted to go from there. But there was a lot of arguing about what to throw away.

Stocker: Jake’s expression of that concern is valid … once that’s brought to our attention, it’s our job to attend to it. But also, it’s like, “God dammit dude — can’t we just say goodbye to this thing and move on?”

Allen: I remember listening to it and feeling excited for the songs, but deep down, I was like, ‘It just needs to get mixed right or something.’ Which tends to be an excuse for something else that’s lacking.

What was missing?

Luppen: It just didn’t sound like we were having fun playing music. We went into the record wanting to make the best Hippo Campus record ever. It immediately put a lot of pressure on the thing. The stakes were so high that, personally, I was stressed out the entire time — second-guessing songs, second-guessing the performances.

Sutton: We were too zoomed in. We’d been chasing these 100 songs for a year in a half. We were like, “We have lost the f–king plot.”

What needed to change for Flood to finally come together?

Allen: We were just so separated most of the time at home. It was rare at a certain point that we were all in the same room. At Sonic Ranch, we were all there — we had to be there. We had to make ourselves experience it, whether we wanted to or not.

Luppen: Hippo Campus, when it’s at its best, is us playing music together in a room. To make the best Hippo Campus record is to capture the feeling that our live shows capture. The best way to do that was to track all together at the same time.

Allen: Doing what we did at Sonic Ranch is proof that [recording live] is a crucial thing for us, to make ourselves be in an isolated space and just get s–t done. Otherwise, we just get too relaxed or comfortable or lazy.

Will fans ever hear those other 100 songs?

Sutton: I f–king hope so. Those are some of my favorite songs.

Stocker: The large majority of them, probably not.

Sutton: Once a song is considered so heavily and inevitably shelved, it’s hard to go back to that shelf. It’s shouldered with all the disagreements that we had about the song.

Stocker: “You used to f–king hate this one, you want to release it now?” [Laughs.] All the songs we have in the back room collecting dust, those tear at us in a lot of different ways. Because they’re still ours.

What is Flood about for you personally?

Stocker: It’s a line of simple questioning: Am I good enough? Do I love you? Am I a phony?

Sutton: The motif seems like redefining where you are, especially as a group. This is our fourth record: Who are we now? Where do we want to go?

Luppen: Flood is like being naked in a lit room with a mirror held up to you, and being like, “Embrace this.” It’s a testament to all the things we need to be doing to take care of ourselves and live better. Now that we’re into our 30s, we wanted Flood to be the start of the music we make in those years, where you’re not driven by this youthful crazy energy.

How does touring look different for you as you get older?

Stocker: We usually cap it at three weeks now. It’s the longest we’ll go out without a break, just so we can maintain a level of sanity.

Allen: It’s chilled out so much. With [Nathan’s] new sobriety over the last couple of years, that was a big shift on the whole group. 2022 was the grand finale of what it used to be for us on the big LP3 tour. I just remember being at the end of that tour feeling f–king wiped. That was definitely a wakeup call.

Sutton: At our worst, we’d get up at noon, have a beer, then not eat anything until the show. You do what you think you’re supposed to do – “Oh, it’s a party!” — there was a culture that was set by all of us.

Luppen: It was like partying in a Midwestern way, where we’d just get wasted on the bus and watch Harry Potter.

Allen: Now everybody’s chilling, getting in their bus bunk by 11:00 p.m.

Why was sobriety important for the band?

Luppen: We were using alcohol, I think, to numb fatigue or nerves. I have the life that I’ve always dreamed of, and I want to be present and there for it, even if that means I’m riding the waves a little deeper on the ups and the downs. It’s better than just sleepwalking your way through life.

Stocker: With not drinking and having a newfound clarity within my personal life … I became obsessed with fulfilling this vision of myself that I had, which was, ‘If you are going to do this thing, you have to do it the best that you can.’ That meant showing up every day and writing a song if I could. I felt like I had to make up for lost time from being perpetually wasted for 10 years.

Other than sobriety, what did you need to discuss in band therapy?

Sutton: I couldn’t talk to anyone in the band without seeing all the f–king baggage. The biggest disagreement is defining what Hippo Campus is. We all have different answers about the music — mainly how the music’s made — and what the music’s saying.

Stocker: We needed to have conversations about how things had been and how not to go back there, because that was dark and harmful. It was really affirmative in, like, “Okay, yes, we’re still friends, we haven’t done anything to each other that’s irreparable damage or anything like that.” We can reestablish these healthy lines of communication so that, moving forward with this record as friends, individuals, human beings and business partners, we can do this in a healthy way.

Luppen: It was us paying to force ourselves to talk to each other. We all changed a lot over the pandemic in our personal lives, with our partners and everything. On top of that, we’ve been friends since we were 14. In a lot of ways, we were still communicating with each other like we were still in high school. Therapy allowed me to see everybody for where they’re at now.

Why did you change labels to Psychic Hotline when your deal with Grand Jury Records ended?

Luppen: We wanted to try something different this time around. We kind of shopped [Flood] around to a lot of different labels. We talked to majors, we talked to indies. Frankly, it was pretty disappointing. There were a lot of major labels that passed on it, which was confusing for us. We’ve spent 10 years working our asses off building a very organic, sustainable business.

Allen: We were told that they loved the record, but there’s just not enough “virality” in the band. It’s proof that they’re not interested in the actual success of a band, they’re just interested in the little spike in numbers that bring in royalties and syncs or whatever the f–k. Then as soon as that band doesn’t provide that same accidental moment, it’s all over.

Luppen: Psychic Hotline is run by our manager [Martin Anderson]. It was the option that allowed us the most freedom and cared the most about the project. It was clear they loved the music and they really understood us on a deep level. We were like, “Let’s just bet on ourselves like we’ve done our entire career and grassroots this motherf–ker.”

Stocker: Having the management side of things already taken care of and having them already be so close to us throughout that creative process, it made sense to bring them in on the label side as well.

What are your goals for the band? Are you actively trying to expand?

Sutton: It would be stupid to say, ‘Still not there yet.’ Like, this is it. To say I want anything more would be so ungrateful. I do always feel very competitive about being the best version of ourselves. I want to be in the same conversation as all the people that influenced me.

Allen: There are still some things we would like to do. We’ve never done a Tiny Desk, or some talk shows.

Stocker: We still have this idea that we want to be the biggest band in the world, but that is not something we’re interested in at the cost of our integrity and our friendships.

Luppen: It’s about preserving what we have at this point and not burning out. When I was younger, I was constantly trying to climb this hill that had no end. The biggest goal we could ever imagine was selling out Red Rocks [in Colorado] when we started the band, and we did that. Playing arenas … that doesn’t sound attractive to us. We’re happy with where we’re at. If more people come in, I’m always grateful for that.

I think there’s a record we have yet to make that really captures everything. We thought maybe it was going to be [Flood], and this one gets closer. But for me it’s about cracking a perfect Hippo record. Every Hippo record we’ve kind of had to learn to love.

But isn’t that kind of the same thought process that got you into the endless writing cycle with Flood?

Luppen: It’s a blessing and a curse. We’re always sort of hungry for something that’s just past what you’re capable of doing. But I do think that is a driving force of what makes Hippo rad. Maybe we’ll never make that record, or maybe we already made that record. Who the f–k knows?

You raise a good point, though. I’m gonna reflect on that.