Snapchat will soon let you add music to the videos that you record, making it the latest social app to take on TikTok by offering the ability to embed popular songs. The announcement comes as President Trump threatens to crack down on TikTok, and Instagram plans to unveil his own TikTok competitor in the coming weeks.
Snap said the app will be introduced to English-language consumers this fall, with the first version rolling out in New Zealand and Australia beginning today. The feature might let Snapchat gain some of the energy and creativity that users are bringing to TikTok at the moment, but it seems like it's not being designed as a full-on TikTok competitor.
For now, it sounds like there's not going to be a feed of videos set to music, and there's not going to be a way to see other videos featuring the same song — TikTok's two key features.
A Snap spokesperson emphasized that it was designed to share music with your "real friends." That said, Snap knows that TikTok is the target here. In an email explaining the new functionality, Snap said that, "based on publicly accessible data, its app "makes more users in the U.S. than Facebook and TikTok combined.
The app launches Warner Music Company, Universal Music Publishing Company, Merlin, and more with a large and selected music catalogue. Snap was claimed to have been in negotiations to license music as far back as May 2019, about the same time that TikTok turned "Old Town Road" into a hit. Snap is developing this feature in a way that labels would prefer: when you roll up a video, you'll get the title and artist of the song, plus a link to listen to the track on your favorite streaming platform.
