In 2014, video-sharing platform Musical.ly swooped the entire world by storm as short-form videos emerged as leading content shared across social media. In 2017, they were acquired by ByteDance and have since been merged with TikTok, which had been a cultural phenomena in the whole world.
Now, TikTok is by far one of the biggest and most used social media platforms in the world. It has also branched into e-commerce, journalism, education, and even music.
However, despite the growing usage of TikTok worldwide and its expansion to other companies, TikTok seemed to cut off some of its key employees amid everything.
TikTok Lays Off Employees
Billboard reports that the music team of TikTok was hit with a significant layoffs. Apparently, the layoffs were due to "improve efficiency."
It has affected seven of its key staffers including their senior product strategy & operations lead Kelly Chen, and U.S. music partnerships and operations lead Marisa Jeffries.
The crackdown also affected the artist services team, including global music, TikTok Music and the distribution platform SoundOn.
Per LinkedIn, Chen was part of the key people in Musical.ly as their senior manager for strategic partnerships. When the company merged with TikTok in 2018 due to the ByteDance acquisition, she became the head of the content partnership and even acted as the head of TikTok in the US in its early stages.
As for Jeffries, she started working at TikTok in 2021 and became a key officer in handling label relations, and partnerships with distributors and labels, across the entire North America. She even worked with SoundCloud and Sony Music's marketing team.
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TikTok Laid Off Amid TikTok Music Launch
The layoffs came at a rather confusing time for many as TikTok launched major developments on the music front, Billboard reports.
TikTok Music was unveiled last July 2023. It has been launched as a music streaming platform in Indonesia, Brazil, Australia, Mexico, and Singapore.
In the same month, TikTok inked a major partnership with Warner Music Group - which allows the music from the company to be legally used in the application - opening their entire library of music to the app.
Artists signed to the label can also sell merchandise and reach more fans through the app.
Aside from this, a new emerging artist program, Elevate, was also launched, as well an AI music creation tool Ripple was also unveiled.
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