TikTok’s music ambitions continue to grow apace, but its music team has gotten a little smaller this month.
Billboard reported that seven employees in TikTok’s music team were laid off last week, including senior strategy and ops lead Kelly Chen Solomero, and US music partnerships and operations lead Marisa Jeffries.
The former was one of the veterans of the company, having joined TikTok’s predecessor Musical·ly (as ever: not us!) in 2016 as its senior manager of strategic partnerships. She began working in TikTok’s music team in 2021. Former SoundCloud and Sony Music staffer Jeffries moved to TikTok in 2021, meanwhile.
A reduction in headcount within TikTok’s music team is surprising, given the company’s recent launch of streaming service TikTok Music in Brazil and Indonesia, and then its rollout to Mexico, Singapore and Australia.
However, TikTok is also still hiring for music roles in the US across areas including music creation, music promotion and legal for example.
This is more of a restructuring, then, with the number of people affected (seven, according to the report, although TikTok declined to comment) a relatively small percentage of the company’s hundreds-strong music team worldwide.
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