TikTok now lets you share music and podcasts directly from Apple Music and Spotify

Just a few months after announcing the shutdown of its standalone music platform, TikTok Music, TikTok has launched a new feature called “Share to TikTok.”

This marks a shift for ByteDance’s popular app, pivoting from direct competition with music streaming services to more collaborative integrations.

Through this new feature, TikTok's ~1.04 billion users can now share tracks, albums, playlists, audiobooks, and podcasts directly from Spotify and Apple Music to their TikTok feed, Stories, or through direct messages (DMs).

TikTok’s music platform is shutting down this November
The company is deciding to no longer compete, but to collaborate with other established streaming services.

The shared content also includes links back to the music streaming service, promising a seamless connection between TikTok and users’ preferred music apps.

TikTok’s influence on music discovery—where viral songs on the app often reach the Billboard 100 or Spotify’s Viral 50, says Billboard—now has a new layer, enabling deeper engagement as fans can easily explore and save music they hear on the app.

For Spotify (Source: TikTok)

This new feature further builds on TikTok’s previous “Add to Music” feature, which allowed users to save songs they discovered on TikTok directly to their preferred streaming service playlists.

According to TikTok, this earlier "Add to Music" feature led to millions of tracks saved and billions of streams across platforms. Now, with “Share to TikTok,” the process has come “full circle” by letting fans also share their favourites from streaming services back to TikTok.

Spotify vs. Apple Music: A Comparison Infographic
Both Spotify and Apple Music have carved out significant niches within the music streaming industry.

With the “Share to TikTok” feature, Spotify users can share content from the “Now Playing” screen or Spotify’s share button. On Apple Music, users can share content through Apple’s Share Sheet, with options to share the music as a video, photo, or message.

For Apple Music (Source: TikTok)

For TikTok, this integration seems to align with its strategy to stay central to music discovery, allowing it to amplify songs.

This move could also help to ease competitive tensions with streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, who may now benefit from the additional traffic TikTok can bring to their platforms. The new feature, according to TikTok is now available on both Apple Music and Spotify.

TikTok now lets you find songs by singing or humming them
TikTok has released its own shazam like feature, following the release of YouTube Music sound search.