TikTok’s Toyin Mustapha has outlined the company’s plans for maintaining its lofty status in an ever-competitive market.
The company is riding high after its Add To Music App, which allows TikTok users to seamlessly link music they discover on the service to their streaming app of choice, won the Music Consumer Innovation honour at the 2025 Music Week Awards.
SoundOn, its all-in-one platform for music marketing and distribution, was also shortlisted in the Label/Artist Services category, and Mustapha, TikTok's head of music partnerships UK, Ireland & SSA, teased there was still much more to come.
“We’re always trying to find new ways to help the industry and help artists engage with their fans and help them monetise their TikTok accounts," he said. "We’ve done a lot of great work in the past 18 months. As well as Add To Music, we did ticket partnerships with AXS and CTS Eventim to enable artists to sell tickets directly from TikTok. We’re looking at working more closely with the TikTok shop team to enable merch for artists to become our next big thing as well.”
Speaking in the August issue of Music Week, Mustapha stressed that TikTok sees itself "as a platform that goes hand in hand with everything else".
We’re trying to ensure that we are helping artists at every step of every stage of their career
Toyin Mustapha
"If you look at artist release campaigns and how artists try and build their careers, TikTok is definitely a part of that," he said. "A misconception in the past has been that TikTok is the platform you need to focus on if you just want that moment of virality and then it’s gone. That’s not what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to ensure that we are helping artists at every step of every stage of their career, but, more importantly, to really help them on their releases so that their songs can live as long as possible.
"I know a lot of stuff gets said by other people, and this, that and the other but, truthfully, from an internal point of view, we only see ourselves as partners. We don’t really see ourselves as competitors to anyone else.”
The former musician explained how TikTok, which boasts a billion-plus users, hoped to stay ahead of the curve.
“It’s all down to our community, they are the driving force," he said. "So, we hope they continue to find the platform useful and find a place where they can be creative. As long as they do that, then I’m hoping it’s going to hold us in very, very strong stead moving forward.”
Mustapha also shared his thoughts on the appointment of Tracy Gardner as global head of music business development at TikTok and parent company ByteDance following the departure of Ole Obermann.
“Obviously Tracy’s been at TikTok a very long time and I’m so happy she’s got the job,” said Mustapha. “We haven’t worked too closely so far because our areas of focus are different, but when we do speak it’s really a lot of fun. She’s very creative and has some really great ideas, which we’re able to take on and riff on, so I’m looking forward to doing more together for sure.”
Being at a place like TikTok and ByteDance, you can have an idea and be able to work internally with the right teams to actually make it happen
Toyin Mustapha
As he approaches a year in his current role, Mustapha was keen to get across the importance of the collective.
"I definitely feel my team is one of the best," he said. "Firstly, we all have industry experience, whether on the label side, the management side, or elsewhere. We’re all very creative. This job is so much fun because I get to have the creative aspects, as well as the innovation.
"Being at a place like TikTok and ByteDance, you can have an idea and be able to work internally with the right teams to actually make it happen. That’s very rare. I’m very creative, and I knew I enjoyed the business side, the strategic thinking, planning and connecting the dots. This job is perfect because it allows me to do both. It’s a lot of work but a lot of fun.”
And with Lyor Cohen having claimed that he won’t stop until YouTube is the number one revenue generator for the industry, Mustapha responded as to whether TikTok harboured similar ambitions.
“We’ve already shown our commitment to helping the wider business," he said. "We’re very much trying to ensure that TikTok is the platform for music discovery, artists and fan engagement. Whatever YouTube’s aspirations are, it’s obviously a great platform as well. But we’re definitely focused on what we can do via our own platform and our TikTok community to help artists.”
Subscribers can read the full Music Week Interview with Mustapha here.
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