TikTok’s Apple Music Gambit: The Opening Move in a Checkmate Strategy

TikTok just pulled a chess move that may not be so obvious to the naked eye, but will eventually be a checkmate scenario for rightsholders in the coming years. 

TikTok is well known for pushing the boundaries for traditional copyright licensing, with the latest negotiation collapse with Merlin as the most recent example. TikTok has now once again flexed their muscles and teamed up with Apple Music, the music streaming service that once upon a time, was the alley of the industry, now the king of all service bundles. 

On 11 March 2026, Apple Music and TikTok jointly announced Play Full Song, a feature allowing TikTok users who are Apple Music subscribers to listen to full tracks without leaving the TikTok app. Built on Apple's MusicKit framework, the integration embeds an Apple Music player inside TikTok's interface. When a user, who is simultaneously an Apple subscriber, taps the Play Full Song button, the audio stream is delivered by Apple Music's infrastructure, the play is counted as an Apple Music stream, and royalties go through Apple's existing licensing arrangements with labels publishers and PROs/CMOs. 

You can currently incorporate up to 90 seconds of music in your TikTok video, if you select the music within the app. TikTok can therefore claim that it shouldn't have to pay as much as a full streaming service like Spotify or Apple Music, as it doesn't allow for the full duration of the song. 

If you are an Apple Music subscriber, you can now stream full-length songs on TikTok, without leaving the app. 

This looks like a win-win for the TikTok users, Apple and TikTok, but it also means a massive loss to, you guessed it, the rightsholders. Let us break down the legal framework and why this is an issue that can easily cascade into a new era of streaming.

What does the law say?

To run a UGC (“User generated Content”) platform, you must obtain a host of licenses. However, most importantly the non-commercial sync license for the performance and reproduction of song recordings and musical works. This license is provided by record labels, publishers and PRO’s/CMOs around the world. The same goes for a music streaming platform, however, you don’t need the sync aspect here as there's no video present. As TikTok offers a limited duration of music within the app, streaming cannot happen under the TikTok umbrella. According to the announcement above, Apple has embedded a player for its paying subscribers. One of these services has the license to stream full-length tracks, and it’s not TikTok.

So why isn’t TikTok required to obtain additional licenses for this new venture? Well, according to the CJEU if there is an embedded, rather than integrated, feature, in this case a player, it’s the embedded party that’s liable for obtaining these licenses. 

The relevant legal framework under EU law is Article 3 of the InfoSoc Directive (2001/29/EC), and Article 17 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive (2019/790/EU). The central concept is the right of communication to the public, where rightsholders hold the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit any communication of their works to the public, including making those works available in such a way that members of the public may access them from a place and time individually chosen by them.

The CJEU has interpreted this right across a line of cases that moved the analysis away from technical transmission toward economic reality and intent. In Svensson (C-466/12, 2014), the CJEU held that hyperlinking to freely available content does not constitute a communication to a new public, because the rights holder had already made the work available to all internet users. In GS Media (C-160/15, 2016), the CJEU introduced the profit presumption, where a party links to content for commercial purposes, it is presumed to have knowledge of the legal status of that content and bears responsibility accordingly. In Stichting Brein v Ziggo (C-610/15, 2017), the CJEU went further, holding that even the enabling of access to infringing content, without direct transmission, can constitute a communication to the public, where the originator acts knowingly and for profit. The VG Bild-Kunst case (C-392/19, 2021) refined the analysis further, confirming that embedding content on a third-party platform by circumventing access restrictions constitutes a communication to a new public requiring fresh authorisation. Critically, the CJEU emphasised that the rightsholder's ability to control the conditions of communication is itself a protected interest, not merely their ability to receive payment.

The common thread running through this law is the CJEU’s consistent refusal to allow the formal or technical structure of an arrangement to determine its copyright significance. What matters is whether a party intervenes, intentionally and for profit, to give access to a protected work to an audience that would not otherwise have had it, in a context not sanctioned by the rights holder.

If TikTok had integrated Apple's player, or launched its own streaming service, akin to YouTube Music, rightsholders would be able to take part of an additional revenue stream. Greedy, some may think, but in a time where the value of music is diminishing and steered by the tech giants, the industry must exercise the same creative thinking.  

Article 17 CDSM was implemented to fix the value gap, directed at the situation where large online platforms profited from music without paying for it. The recitals to the Directive make one thing clear, there is a need to ensure that authors and performers receive a fair share of the value generated when their works are made available on online content sharing service providers.

The original target was platforms that hosted UGC containing music, where the platform's safe harbour under the Directive on Electronic Commerce shielded it from liability while it monetised that content through advertising. TikTok was, and remains, one of the archetype examples of the platform type Article 17 was designed to adjust.

Article 17(1) states that a large online content sharing service provider, such as TikTok, makes an act of communication to the public when it gives the public access to copyright-protected works uploaded by its users, and must therefore obtain a license from the rights holders who own the music. The legal text was designed to ensure that platforms could not offload licensing costs onto others while keeping the financial gain for themselves.

The TikTok and Apple Music arrangement does precisely this. TikTok gives its users access to full-length tracks. The fact that it does so through an embedded Apple Music player, rather than streaming the music directly from its own servers, has a great financial impact on TikTok's topline revenues. TikTok users stay on TikTok and therefore keep a higher daily user retention.TikTok earns advertising and engagement revenue from the users continued presence, and TikTok bears no licensing cost for the playing of full length tracks. The licensing burden has been offloaded entirely to Apple, while TikTok keeps the commercial benefit without having to license and pay for the exploitation of the music itself. What's in it for Apple?  Apple gets access to a powerful 1.5 billion TikTok users to grow the Apple Music eco-system. The TikTok users who do not have Apple Music can take part of a plethora of free trial offers to access the music as they are diverted to these offers when they tap the Play Full Song button. This is yet another attempt of subscriber cannibalization masked as a user feature upgrade.   

Permission or workaround?

The Svensson safe harbour was built on the principle that the original rightsholder made the content freely available to all internet users. Apple Music content is not freely available. It is behind a subscription paywall. The Svensson reasoning expressly does not apply where access restrictions exist, a point the CJEU confirmed in VG Bild-Kunst.

The question is therefore whether TikTok is getting around a restriction, or simply operating within a permission Apple already holds.

Apple's licensing deals with rights holders may not have realized or authorized this type of embedding. Those deals were negotiated with Apple Music as a standalone service. Whether they extend to have music embedded within another competing social media platform that earns advertising revenue from users' continued engagement with their music is another question. 

The CJEU's approach in GS Media highlighted that enablement for profit carries a presumption of responsibility. TikTok is, without a doubt acting for profit. It monetises user attention. The longer users stay on TikTok, including listening to full tracks without leaving the platform, the more advertising revenue TikTok generates. The arrangement is a commercial exploitation of music by a platform that holds no music licence for that particular use.

The legislative history of Article 17 makes clear that this is precisely the conduct the Directive targeted. The recitals speak of ensuring that rights holders receive a fair share of the value generated. Where one platform generates value from music and another platform pays for it, the fairness rationale of Article 17 is activated, no matter if the technical design has been built to avoid triggering the legal obligation.

Covered by license?

Apple's licensing deals are negotiated with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and the major publishing houses. Independent labels and independent artists may be covered by deals with distributors or collecting societies.

The question of whether any of those deals specifically authorised playback embedded within a third-party social media platform's interface is unlikely to have been directly addressed. Rights holders who did not contemplate this use case when licensing Apple Music have had no opportunity to price it, condition it, or refuse it. 

The history of digital music licensing is a history of rights holders discovering, after the fact, that their works were being exploited in ways they did not authorise and did not price. Article 17 was a legislative response to that history. Permitting its logic to be circumvented by routing licensed content through a third party's technical infrastructure would repeat the same pattern the Directive was designed to break.

Conclusion

The TikTok and Apple Music Play Full Song arrangement has been carefully structured to place the act of communication to the public within Apple Music's licensed environment. As the law currently stands, that structure may be sufficient to shield TikTok from a direct Article 17 obligation. The case law has not squarely addressed this precise configuration, and courts presented with it would face genuine uncertainty.

But being difficult to challenge in court is not the same as actually complying with what the law was meant to achieve. Article 17 was not legislated to control the technical mechanics of streaming. It was enacted to address the economic reality of platforms profiting from music without reasonable remuneration flowing to the people who create it. An outcome that allows TikTok to profit from full-length music playback without paying for it technically complies with the Directive while completely undermining its principles. 

One licence fee is paid by Apple, per stream, while two platforms extract commercial value from the exploitation. Rightsholders receive what they would have received from any Apple Music play, but nothing for TikTok's independent commercial benefit from their works. That benefit is real, substantial, and entirely unremunerated. The value gap Article 17 was designed to close has not been closed. It has been re-engineered. The irony is that TikTok, one of the primary targets when Article 17 was being negotiated, has now found an arrangement that may be argued to fall outside the scope of the very Directive it inspired. Unfortunately, it may not stop here, is a new era of music streaming economics emerging? Is Spotify and all the other streaming platforms out there next? If this is the case, TikTok has managed to capitalise on the world's biggest streaming services to offer an added value to its users, without paying the musicians and artists behind the songs.