Photo Credit: Triller
With TikTok’s fate hanging in the balance due to a quickly approaching stateside ban, social music video app Triller has taken steps to solidify its content-delivery infrastructure by inking an 18-month contract with 7digital.
Triller and 7digital, a London-based digital music and radio services platform, recently announced their latest agreement, which follows a similar deal in August 2018. As with the latter, this most recent contract encompasses recording delivery and relaying Triller music-usage statistics to rights holders.
As part of the newest arrangement, however, 7digital will afford Triller – which boasts investments from and licensing deals with each of the Big Three record labels – access to its application programming interface (API) for both streaming and music-video placement.
Given TikTok’s uncertain future and Triller’s quickly growing popularity – we reported last week that the app had topped the App Store charts – the bolstered content-delivery infrastructure partnership with 7digital seems to be indicative of the platform’s hopeful vision for the future, including a potentially massive uptick in users.
A variety of other apps are also looking to fill the short-form video void that TikTok will leave behind if it’s outlawed in the U.S. Per a new Piplsay survey (in which 30,499 Americans participated), 40 percent of the country believes that TikTok may pose a threat to national security.
Moreover, Triller has also become increasingly prominent on the international front. Just recently, company officials claimed that the platform experienced a “significant spike in growth” following TikTok’s ban in India. Japanese lawmakers are still considering the possibility of implementing a TikTok prohibition of their own – a move that the Chinese government warned would have a “large impact” on the countries’ relationship. As of March 2019, nearly 40 percent of Japanese teenagers were using TikTok, and the figure has more than likely jumped in the interim.
Additionally, Triller’s comprehensive effort to supplant TikTok has entered the courtroom. Two weeks ago, we covered the massive patent-infringement lawsuit that Triller filed against TikTok and its ByteDance parent company for allegedly stealing a patent relating to automatically syncing songs to user-created videos.
On the funding front, it appears that Triller possesses the capital required to pursue its ambitious long-term goals. Aside from the aforementioned Big Three labels’ financial support, Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg, and Marshmello are among the platform’s music industry backers. Plus, sources have indicated that Triller is in the process of securing another $200 to $300 million from investors. At the time of this writing, however, Triller higher-ups hadn’t publicly confirmed or denied reports of the new fundraising round.
Two days ago, Triller announced that it had delayed the eight-round exhibition bout between Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr. until November 28th. The app reportedly paid $50 million for the contest’s exclusive streaming rights.