Author : zebethcontrol

Uber withdraws petition to annul new ride-hailing regulations in Kenya • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in kenya, Transportation, UberNo Comments

Uber has applied to withdraw a petition in Kenya challenging the new ride-hailing regulations that capped commissions at 18%, and required taxi apps operating to acquire licenses. Coulson Harney, the law firm representing Uber, filed the notice of withdrawal bringing to an end its push to have the new digital ride-hailing regulations annulled. “Take notice that Uber B.V, the petitioner, gives notice and wholly withdraws its petition and the notice of motion application,” read the application, seen by ZebethMedia, and which came days after Uber lowered its commission from 25% and got a license to operate in Kenya. Estonia’s Bolt, Kenya’s Little and Rwanda-based Yego have also received approval to operate in the East Africa’s biggest economy. Uber confirmed to ZebethMedia that it had applied to withdraw the case, saying it remains committed to working closely with Kenya’s policymakers to help improve driver earnings, and ensure a great user experience. “On 03 November 2022, Uber filed an application to withdraw the constitutional petition on the new transport network regulations published by the Ministry of Transport in June. Having received a transport network license from the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) has and considered several factors, we felt that the best course of action was to comply with the regulations, which includes the lowering of our service fee from 25% to 18%. We will continue to liaise with NTSA on the implementation of the regulations,” said an Uber spokesperson. The new law by Kenya’s Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure gives NTSA the mandate to enforce it. “We remain committed to Kenya and to creating economic opportunities for drivers and providing enhanced mobility for riders, as we have done since our launch in the market in 2015,” Uber said. Uber filed the petition in September this year urging Kenya’s high court to expunge the newly-implemented regulations, adding that some sections were unconstitutional, discriminatory, discouraging to foreign investments, and infringing on its rights and those of its riders and partners. Uber protested Kenya’s decision to cap commissions charged per ride, and plans to reevaluate pricing structures, saying the move would dent its earnings. It insisted that Kenya is a free market, where ride-hailing companies have the right to negotiate commercial agreements without external influence. It also claimed that the regulations were made and gazetted without following due process and public participation. The new law requires all platforms to have a physical presence in Kenya, and to obtain a license to operate. Uber had also faulted the condition that all ride-hailing companies must obtain a transport network license from NTSA to operate, saying that it was not a transport service but an app offering intermediation service. It said the regulations are discriminatory because only persons with Kenyan Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) were allowed to obtain the mandatory license. Ride-hailing companies in Kenya, including Bolt and Little, are also required to share drivers’ and riders’ data upon request by the authority. Uber said that this would be a contravention of the new Data Protection Act.

Surfe brings your CRM data to LinkedIn — and vice versa • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in CRM, Enterprise, revenue, sales, Startups, SurfeNo Comments

Surfe, the startup that was originally named Leadjet, is an interesting browser extension if you spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and are tired of switching between your CRM and the professional social network. When you install Surfe’s browser extension, you get some nifty syncing features between your CRM and LinkedIn. For instance, you can find leads on LinkedIn and easily export them to your CRM platform. But you can also view CRM data directly on LinkedIn profile pages. “We believe the CRM should be where the relationships happen,” co-founder and CEO David Maurice Chevalier told me. “We are just closing the gap here between these different platforms and CRMs.” Surfe works with HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive and Copper. Surfe originally started as a quick export tool for LinkedIn. You install the browser extension and you can export a LinkedIn profile to your CRM without having to manually copy and paste a ton of data. But it has evolved into a more powerful tool that provides two-way syncing. Surfe injects CRM data on LinkedIn directly so that you can interact with your CRM where you already spend most of your time. When you add a LinkedIn contact to your CRM, you can fill out CRM fields from there — industry, company size, role in the company, etc. If you rely heavily on LinkedIn messages, you can also sync private conversations with your CRM. It can be particularly useful with multiple sales people. You can see if someone on the team has already contacted a specific person and the current status of the deal. All these new features create a healthier relationship with LinkedIn. “We are not a data exporter, we increase the time spent on LinkedIn,” Chevalier said. The browser extension also acts as a shortcut to your CRM. You can write notes and create tasks in just a few clicks. There’s a bigger play for Surfe. The startup wants to modernize the CRM interface. Users can open full-screen views with the deal pipeline in kanban and list views. It might not replace your CRM but it can help you push quick updates. “The CRM is more of a data platform and we think we need a new front end,” Chevalier said. There are 1,500 companies using Surfe in one way or another. Some sales people just started using it directly, while other companies have hundreds of licenses. Spendesk is a big Surfe customer for instance. Surfe competes with products like Scratchpad and Dooly. Up next, the team wants to bring CRM features to more places around the web. The company raised $4 million (€4 million) this summer in a seed round led by 360 Capital. Other participants in the round include TS Ventures and various business angels. More impressive, the team managed to reach €1 million in annual recurring revenue without any proper sales team. Now that it has raised some funding, it wants to reach the next level. Image Credits: Surfe

Etsy begins rolling out visual search, starting with iOS users • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in Apps, Commerce, eCommerce, EtsyNo Comments

Etsy is is launching a new image search feature that is designed to help users find what they’re looking for faster. Up until now, the only way to search on Etsy was through keywords. Now, users on iOS can tap the new camera icon in the search bar and upload or take a photo, after which Etsy will surface items that are visually similar to the image the user shared. Etsy didn’t share its plans regarding an Android launch. The company says the new feature aims to help users discover items when have trouble finding the right words to define a specific product. For example, say you’re looking for a mug in your favorite color, but don’t know how to describe the exact shade you want. Or, you see a unique piece of furniture and want to find a small business that can hand make something similar for you. The new image search feature should help you find what you’re looking for in instances like these. Image Credits: Etsy “With more than 100 million items in our marketplace, odds are that if you can dream it – or snap a photo of it – you’ll find something you love on Etsy,” the company said in a blog post. “We’re always investing in our marketplace to make it easier for sellers to grow their businesses. We’re excited for this new, innovative feature to make it easier for sellers to get discovered and connect with our built-in base of nearly 90 million buyers around the world.” Etsy says the new feature was developed as part of CodeMosaic, which is an annual Etsy Hackathon that gives engineers opportunities to try out new skills while building creative solutions. The launch of Etsy’s new feature comes as platforms like Google and Pinterest have had image search capabilities for quite some time now. Google recently added updates to its multisearch feature that lets users combine a photo and text to craft custom searches, initially around shopping. The search giant also added its Lens image search right into its home page this week, letting users access the advanced image recognition tool directly from the search box. Etsy released its third quarter earnings on Wednesday and reported a revenue bump of 11.7% over the same quarter of 2021 to $594.5 million. The bump was likely partially due to the platform’s increased transaction fee from 5% to 6.5%. The change saw sellers go on strike earlier this year after the fee increase was announced. Etsy had noted on its website that the increased fee supported its plans to make “significant investments in marketing, seller tools and creating a world-class customer experience.”

AfroTech Conference heads to Austin for first in-person event since 2019 • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in AfroTech, conference, EC DEI, Media & Entertainment, startupNo Comments

The AfroTech Conference, one of the nation’s most prominent Black tech gatherings, will touch down in Austin on November 13 for its first in-person event since 2019. The event is put on annually by the publication AfroTech, with this year’s theme being web3. High-profile speakers for the conference include NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, billionaire Mark Cuban, and “venture rapitivist” — VC and rapper — Chamillionaire, who will speak about brand-building and investments. Other speakers include 15 Percent Pledge founder Aurora James, Career Karma CEO Ruben Harris, and Backstage Capital founder Arlan Hamilton. Speaking to ZebethMedia, Morgan DeBaun, the co-founder and CEO of AfroTech’s parent company, Blavity, said this year’s event aims to bridge the gap between music, culture, technology, and fintech. It’s added new sessions and programming to help build the skills of attendees in various technical positions and will host workshops on how to find mentors and advisers. “Tech continues to be the fastest-growing industry in the world,” DeBaun told ZebethMedia. “We want to make sure that our community is not just getting the early career jobs, but actually making it all the way through the career ladder.” Unlike many other tech conferences, culture and music play a central role at AfroTech. DeBaun said her goal was to make the event as entertaining as possible, and music is a defining feature of African American culture. There will be live musical performances from artists like Bia, Wale, and Zaytoven, and Disney will premiere “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”

Watch Rocket Lab attempt a mid-air Electron rocket booster recovery live • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in Electron, peter beck, Rocket Lab, SpaceNo Comments

Rocket Lab will try to catch a spent Electron rocket booster mid-air using a helicopter in a few hours, a technique that could be central to driving down rocket production costs and increasing launch cadence. The mission will take place just five months after Rocket Lab conducted its first (partly) successful attempt, during which a helicopter managed to catch the booster, but then dropped it shortly after. The launch will take place from Pad B at the company’s launch site on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula. The mission, dubbed “Catch Me If You Can,” will carry a single science research satellite for the Swedish National Space Agency, provided by OHB Sweden, to sun synchronous orbit. Rocket Lab will have a 75-minute window to conduct the launch, which opens at 1:15 PM EST. The stream at the top of this story will start around 20 minutes before that. The company’s approach to recovery is a bit different than that of SpaceX. Falcon 9 boosters return to Earth by vertically landing on a pad – it looks like a launch in reverse. Instead, Rocket Lab is equipping its first stage with a parachute. That parachute will slow the booster’s descent, and a waiting helicopter will track the booster’s return before using a capture hook to grip the parachute line. From there, the helicopter will carry the booster straight back to Rocket Lab’s production complex. “Our first helicopter catch only a few months ago proved we can do what we set out to do with Electron, and we’re eager to get the helicopter back out there and advance our rocket reusability even further by bringing back a dry stage for the first time,” Beck said. Let’s see if they can do it.

Most of the unicorns aren’t • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in Brex, Equity podcast, Layoffs, Onward, Startups, stripe, VentureNo Comments

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Oh what a week. What a week. Things are busier than ever at ZebethMedia, where we’re coming out of our post-conference stupor and charing straight back into a packed news cycle. Sure, Musk is still making waves, but there are startup rounds to cover, layoffs to chew on, earnings coverage, unicorn reports, new data, and more. After cutting back sharply on material and still going long, here’s what Mary Ann, Natasha, and Alex got into this week: Rewind wants to help people with their memory. We talk about how the startup, which launched this week, uses recording technology to help you get what you see, hear and say at your finger tips. We talked about Onward, a startup that wants to help divorced or separated parents fight less about money and how it just raised nearly $10 million despite being pre-revenue. The somewhat odd, possible Byju’s IPO-spinoff of Aakash, a tutoring company that it bought the other year. Our views can be summarized in meme format: An edtech IPO? In this economy? Unicorns face an incredibly uphill journey to get public, which may explain in part why Byju’s is not itself going public (recall that it had had plans, but like with so many other companies those are on hold). And then there was Brex, which announced a new partnership with Techstars despite a big push into the enterprise space. Stripe revealed that it has cut 14% of its staff, or over 1,100 people, and its CEO and co-founder Patrick Collison admitting that the payments giant had “overhired for the world we’re in.” And finally, there’s a new VC ratings company in the neighborhood. How do we feel? Better than some VCs, at least. Got all that? Good. More Monday morning. Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. ZebethMedia also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!

Twitter faces a class action lawsuit over mass employee layoffs with proper legal notice • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in Apps, elon buys twitter, Elon Musk, Government & Policy, Layoffs, Social, TwitterNo Comments

Twitter is being sued for not giving employees advanced written notice of a mass layoff, in violation of worker protection laws including the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act as well as the California WARN Act, both of which require 60 days of advance notice. Following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the company began mass layoffs early on Friday in an effort to reduce costs by eliminating 3,700 jobs, or 50% of its total workforce. Bloomberg first reported the news of the lawsuit, filed on November 3, 2022 in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California. The complaint notes that Twitter began its layoffs on November 1, when it terminated the plaintiff in the lawsuit, Emmanuel Cornet, without providing the proper written notice in violation of U.S. and California law. Additional plaintiffs, Justine De Caires, Jessica Pan, and Grae Kindel said they were terminated on November 3 by being locked out of their accounts. Twitter is also enacting widespread layoffs across its workforce today, on Nov. 4, 2022, it stated, adding that California’s Employment Development Department had not received a notice related to the event. The suit reminds the court that Musk had previously laid off employees without notice at another company he owns, Tesla. A federal judge later ruled that Tesla must inform workers of the proposed class action lawsuit, as the termination agreements they had signed may have been misleading and caused them to waive their rights under federal law, Reuters reported at the time. Musk had dismissed that lawsuit as “trivial,” when commenting on the lawsuit at the Qatar Economic Forum organized by Bloomberg. In the new complaint against Twitter, the plaintiffs are asking the court to declare that Twitter has violated the federal and California WARN Acts and certify the case as a class action suit. It’s also asking the court to stop Twitter from having the laid-off employees sign documents that would release their claims without informing them of this lawsuit. And it’s seeking a range of relief, including compensatory damages (including wages owed), as well as declaratory relief, pre- and post-judgment interest, plus other attorneys’ fees and costs. Under Twitter’s takeover deal terms, Musk had agreed to keep employee compensation and benefits the same. That means the laid-off employees should receive 60 days of salary and the cash value of the stock they were to receive within three months of their last date at the company, per law. “Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has made clear that he believes complying with federal labor laws is ‘trivial’ We have filed this federal complaint to ensure that Twitter should be held accountable to our laws and to prevent Twitter employees from unknowingly signing away their rights.” Shannon Liss-Riordan, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit told CNN in a statement. Twitter hasn’t responded to requests for comment — but that could also be because its comms staff has been included in the layoffs. The company has gone about its mass layoffs in a chaotic and fairly cold fashion. Instead of being informed personally, Twitter employees were to receive an email with an update about their employment status by Friday 9 AM PT. If they still had a job, the email would come to their work inbox. If not, they’d receive a personal email as access to internal systems was cut off. A number of Twitter employees around the world have already posted tweets indicating that they have been laid off and are sharing sympathies with their fellow “tweeps.” Twitter also closed its offices temporarily as the layoffs were underway by disabling badge access. The transition has been one of confusion for Twitter staff. It’s been reported that Twitter’s new owner hadn’t officially communicated with employees following the deal’s closure on Oct. 27, leading staff to learn of events by following Musk’s tweets, through private chats, on workplace gossip site Blind, and by reading news media reports. Immediately after the takeover, Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, General Counsel Sean Edgett and Head of Legal Policy, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde. Other top executives like Chief Consumer Officer Sarah Personette and Chief of People and Diversity Dalana Brand handed in their resignations the following day. General manager for core technologies Nick Caldwell, Chief marketing officer Leslie Berland, Twitter’s head of product Jay Sullivan, and its vice president of global sales, Jean-Philippe Maheu, have also left. The company canceled its upcoming developer conference Chirp and it appears that Twitter’s head of its developer platform, Amir Shevat, is also out, as he tweeted he’s “better out than in” and thanked the developer community for the amazing journey they had. In addition to reducing the number of employees, Musk has also been overhauling Twitter’s product at a rapid pace. Earlier this week, he announced his intention to enact a new version of the Twitter Blue paid subscription, which will cost $8 per month and offer users the verification check mark, fewer ads, and the ability to post longer videos. According to a report by The Platformer, Twitter is also planning to shut down its long-form writing product Notes and newsletter product Revue, which was acquired in 2021. Tweets indicate that staff that worked on Twitter Communities were also laid off, suggesting that product may also be shut down. The new legal complaint is embedded below. Twitter class action lawsuit over mass layoffs by ZebethMedia on Scribd

Is the modern data stack just old wine in a new bottle? • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in cloud infrastructure, Column, data observability, data stack, EC Cloud and Enterprise Infrastructure, EC Column, EC Enterprise Applications, Enterprise, StartupsNo Comments

Ashish Kakran Contributor Ashish Kakran, principal at Thomvest Ventures, is a product manager/engineer turned investor who enjoys supporting founders with a balance of technical know-how, customer insights, empathy with challenges and market knowledge. More posts by this contributor Here’s where MLOps is accelerating enterprise AI adoption Remember the cable, phone and internet combo offers that used to land in our mailboxes? These offers were highly optimized for conversion, and the type of offer and the monthly price could vary significantly between two neighboring houses or even between condos in the same building. I know this because I used to be a data engineer and built extract-transform-load (ETL) data pipelines for this type of offer optimization. Part of my job involved unpacking encrypted data feeds, removing rows or columns that had missing data, and mapping the fields to our internal data models. Our statistics team then used the clean, updated data to model the best offer for each household. That was almost a decade ago. If you take that process and run it on steroids for 100x larger datasets today, you’ll get to the scale that midsized and large organizations are dealing with today. Each step of the data analysis process is ripe for disruption. For example, a single video conferencing call can generate logs that require hundreds of storage tables. Cloud has fundamentally changed the way business is done because of the unlimited storage and scalable compute resources you can get at an affordable price. To put it simply, this is the difference between old and modern stacks: Image Credits: Ashish Kakran, Thomvest Ventures Why do data leaders today care about the modern data stack? Self-service analytics Citizen-developers want access to critical business dashboards in real time. They want automatically updating dashboards built on top of their operational and customer data. For example, the product team can use real-time product usage and customer renewal data for decision-making. Cloud makes data truly accessible to everyone, but there is a need for self-service analytics compared to legacy, static, on-demand reports and dashboards.

Meet Budibase, a low-code open-source web app builder with automations • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in Apps, Budibase, Enterprise, low-code, open sourceNo Comments

While there are differing perspectives on the degree to which no-code and low-code development tools could eventually supplant human software developers, it’s clear that any software that takes care of the technical “heavylifting” is having a huge impact within businesses — in terms of opening app-building to more personnel, plugging the talent gap, and helping existing developers focus on more demanding tasks. A quick peek across the recent funding landscape shows little sign of the no-code / low-code movement slowing. In 2022 alone we’ve seen the likes of Webflow draw in $120 million for a no-code website builder; Softr raise a $13.5 million Series A to help companies build apps on top of Airtable databases; Appsmith secure a $41 million Series B to power customized internal business apps; Retool attract a $45 million cash injection for a similar proposition; and Thunkable lock down a $30 million investment for a no-code mobile app development platform. So despite the broader downturn, it seems that 2022 may have been relatively kind to startups operating in the no- and low-code sphere, something that fledgling Northern Irish startup Budibase is capitalizing on with the announcement of a fresh $7 million tranche of funding to further develop an open source web app builder. Founded out of Belfast in 2019, Budibase allows users to connect to an external data source — such as Postgres, MySQL, Oracle, Google Sheets, or Airtable — and develop internal tools or business apps in minutes. Such apps may include anything from customer helpdesk applications, application tracking systems, and inventory management systems, to admin panels, portals, and forms. Budibase: Example business application in action It’s also worth noting that Budibase also packs its own built-in database based on CouchDB, for those looking to build apps entirely from scratch. “Every enterprise we speak with says the same thing — ‘we have a long backlog of internal tool tickets that are holding us back’,” Budibase cofounder Joe Johnston told ZebethMedia. “With Budibase, enterprises are building internal tools and transforming workflows in days, not months, which is a huge cost-saving and catalyst for innovation.” Open sourced One of Budibase’s core selling points is that it’s open source, which gives companies more flexibility and extensibility, but also allows them to host everything themselves — this is particularly important for enterprises with sensitive data they may wish to protect from the SaaS-y clutches of third-party infrastructure. In addition to the free self-hosted version of Budibase, the company also offers a range of premium and enterprise plans with add-on features (such as SLAs and unlimited automation logs) and a fully-managed hosted incarnation. Budibase is somewhat similar to other players in the open source low-code development space, including the aforementioned Appsmith and Joget which, as it happens, announced its first institutional funding earlier this year via a $2.2 million pre-Series A investment. So this highlights the demand not only for no- and low-code app builders, but also the ability to retain full control over company data and gain full insights into what’s going on under the hood. “Enterprises like this because they have access to the codebase, and they can patch it if they need to [which is useful for] risk mitigation,” Johnston said. Automation for the people Budibase is looking to set itself apart in a number of ways, through more subjective elements such as usability, but also through specific differentiators such as built-in automations comparable to something like Zapier. Indeed, Budibase includes automations that are powered by webhooks and actions that are good to go out-the-box, but which can also be customized by the more technically-minded that want to throw their own scripts into the pot. Such automations can cover any number of use-cases, such as automatically approving (or denying) an employee’s leave request through an internal form, or issuing a new inbound lead notification to the sales team at the start of their shift. “We want to deliver a platform that helps developers and non-developers — but technical employees — innovate and accelerate their workplace,” Johnston said. Budibase automation in action A quick peek at Budibase’s homepage reveals a fairly impressive roster of company logos, from Google and Netflix, to Tesla and Disney. At first glance, it would appear that these are fully signed-up Budibase customers, but alas this is not the case — Budibase uses a tracking tool called Scarf to detect which domains are downloading the open source Budibase software. So this doesn’t really tell us all that much about how Budibase is being used at these companies, whether it’s being tested internally or whether it’s simply curious employees downloading it for their own interests. “Employees from some of the companies mentioned are active in our community,” Johnston said. “For example, Scarf told us Google has pulled down the Budibase Docker image over 150 times.” Budibase had raised $1.8 million in seed funding prior to now, and its latest $7 million “seed II” funding round included investments from SignalFire, Angular Ventures, Techstart, and a slew of angel backers.

ByteDance’s music app Resso offers hints about TikTok Music’s launch • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in Apps, bytedance, resso, Spotify, TikTokNo Comments

TikTok owner ByteDance is moving towards a launch its music streaming service TikTok Music, rivaling Spotify and YouTube Music, reports have stated. In addition to recent discoveries of TikTok Music trademarks in global markets, ZebethMedia has now discovered newly added references regarding a “TikTok Music” service in the Resso streaming app, owned by TikTok’s parent ByteDance. The code appears to suggest that user activity may sync between the Resso app and TikTok Music, and specifically refers to a “music.tiktok.com” URL, as well. ByteDance today already operates the streaming music service named Resso in markets including in India, Brazil, and Indonesia. But the references to TikTok Music in the Resso app hint that the China-based company might sync user activity between the two apps. In addition, the code refers to TikTok Music as part of TikTok. Image Credits: ZebethMedia It’s unclear whether TikTok will test its music service under the Resso moniker globally, or launch a separate app for that. The company has also launched a site “music.tiktok.com” for certain regions — references of which were also found in the code — suggesting that the service may launch first in Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Malaysia, and Singapore. You can’t download the client yet, and if you try to click on the download button a pop will tell you “We are working hard to bring you the desktop version. Check back soon.” The mobile version of the site suggests that the download button will take users to the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. Image Credits: TikTok The site’s terms of service also uses the brand “TikTok Music,” we found. “Welcome to TikTok Music! TikTok Music, one of our Services defined under the TikTok Terms, is a music streaming service that allows users to listen to music,” the term page reads. Many of the pages on the site have placeholder text indicating that it is still under development. This could mean that ByteDance is preparing to start testing the service in certain geographies. The code references aren’t the only hints that a TikTok Music brand is in the works. The company has also recently registered verified “TikTok Music”-branded social media handles on Twitter and Instagram, as well as region-specific handles for areas like Latin America, Australia and New Zealand, and Asia, and countries like Singapore, and Malaysia. These accounts have posted similar creative teasers saying “Welcome to a new way to experience music,” “discover your new favorite song,” and “stay tuned” between April and May. These moves fall in line with information a former ByteDance employee told ZebethMedia earlier this year. They told us ByteDance had previously considered bringing the Resso service to more markets under a “TikTok Music” branding. More specifically, it had been weighing launches in mature markets like the U.K. and Australia, the source had said. Last month, The Wall Street Journal also reported that ByteDance was in talks with notable music labels to expand its streaming service to global markets. A TikTok Music service would make sense for ByteDance as many hit songs first become viral on TikTok and drive streams on Spotify and YouTube. A report released by the company last year suggested that 175 songs that trended on the short-video platform ended up on the Billboard 100 chart. If ByteDance launches its own music service, it could drive these streams toward its own app — whether that’s Resso or TikTok Music — allowing it to earn advertising and subscription revenue. ByteDance has shown interest in furthering its music investments. Earlier this year, it launched its own music distribution solution called SoundOn. With this service, the company pays 100% royalties to the artists for the first year, then 90% royalties from the second year. The platform also allows artists to drop teasers on TikTok to get early feedback. TikTok Music’s popularity will depend its ability to score deals with major labels, allowing it to offer users access to popular songs in addition to the original songs that launch first on TikTok. This could prove difficult. In September, Sony Music pulled its catalog from Resso, resulting in user backlash, for example. TikTok didn’t reply to requests for comment on this story.