The TikTok thesis over the past couple of years has gone like this: endless opportunities to create cost-effective, authentically engaging content that your target audience actually wants to watch for a long time. A brand gets to be part of the culture with minimal investment and credibility with the target audience is guaranteed! A TikTok-native, entertaining and humorous approach is key! Authenticity! Relevance! Trends!
Brands tap into popular music, memes and culturally relevant things in their content – with humor, of course. New content is created every week according to prevailing trends.
Although a brand's digital planning and channel strategies are already becoming everyday practice, copyright issues with TikTok materials are overlooked even by professionals when getting excited about channel-native creation and thinking about its effectiveness with the target audience. After all, you wouldn't create a radio ad with Beyoncé's Cuff It playing in the background without considering the cost of using the song? Or would a brand use a famous YouTube creator for free in a TV commercial?
The beauty of TikTok, in addition to its extremely precise algorithm, is that anyone can easily get into content creation using the app's own editing tools. You don't even need to figure out a creative approach right away – it's easy to jump into TikTok's stream by creating, for example, your own interpretation of a trending song.
How do you create truly engaging and interesting TikTok content while also ensuring that rights to things like music and other intellectual property rights are in order? Taking over TikTok shouldn't mean only recycling ideas in brand content (even though trends are TikTok's core) but rather really insightful, results-driven and goal-oriented marketing communication. It's the creative agency's job to get the brand's message across in a way that interests the target audience, even if it means using a limited music library. TikTok's terms of service clearly mention usage rights for trending sounds and there are guidelines for using TikTok's music library intended for brands.
But what about it then? Would it be easier to just operate in the gray area and apologize when things hit the fan?
Precedent cases for copyright violations are slowly beginning to surface. Energy drink brand Bang has been sued by several record companies for using hundreds of songs without permission on TikTok. So brands need to find more ways to be current, trendy and relevant to their target audience in this channel too – and there's no shortcut to this either. A brand is always a brand. And when doing business, the work must be professional, whatever the channel.
1. Use TikTok's own music library intended for brands or TikTok's own audio features
2. Don't underestimate speech – for example, voice over works well in content
3. Participate in trends where commercial music isn't the main focus or create trends yourself
4. Create your own music and upload it to TikTok (maybe the song will go viral on its own!)
5. Ask for permission to use music and buy the rights to the song
