Snapchat says it's working on a feature that will let users set their Snaps to music, similar to TikTok's app, coming to English-language markets this fall
Snapchat is taking aim at TikTok. The company announced today it will begin testing a new feature that lets Snapchat users set their Snaps to music, similar to TikTok's app.
Context & Ripple Effects
This announcement closes a loop Snap opened more than a year earlier, when it was reported to be in licensing talks with Sony Music, Universal Music, and Warner Music — the catalog access that any Snaps-to-music feature requires. What was then a negotiation is now a product commitment aimed directly at TikTok's format, scoped first to English-language markets this fall.
The follow-through came fast: within months of this announcement, Snapchat shipped song clips from a curated catalog to iOS users (music on Snaps went live in October), and by November it layered a full TikTok-style Spotlight feed with $1M-a-day creator payouts on top. Music was the enabling layer for that sequence.
First-order effects
- Snapchat users in English-language markets gain the ability to set their Snaps to licensed music, closing the most visible format gap with TikTok without leaving the app.
- TikTok now faces a competitor replicating its core sound-on format inside an app that already owns a large daily-use base, rather than a distant rival.
Second-order effects
- Sony, Universal, and Warner convert their catalogs into a new licensing revenue stream across platforms, with each additional short-video feature raising the price of future catalog deals.
- Curated-catalog licensing becomes a differentiator among platforms: whoever holds broader label deals can ship sound-on features faster than rivals still negotiating.
Third-order effects
- If every major social app converges on sound-on short video, licensed music stops being a feature and becomes table stakes — shifting bargaining power over user-generated content toward the three major labels whose catalogs gate entry.
The trend: Social platforms are racing to replicate TikTok's sound-on format, making major-label catalog licensing the prerequisite infrastructure of the next generation of sharing apps.