  The digital age has significantly changed how music is consumed, promoted,
and monetized. Social media platforms like TikTok are playing a pivotal role in
this transformation. This shift has sparked a debate within the music industry:
While some stakeholders see social media platforms like TikTok as opportunities
to boost songs to viral status, others raise concerns about potential
cannibalization effects, fearing that such exposure might reduce revenue from
streaming services like Spotify. In this paper, we evaluate the effect of a
song's presence - or absence - on social media on its demand on music streaming
services using a quasi-natural experiment: Universal Music Group's (UMG) - one
of "The Big 3" record labels - decision to remove its entire content library
from TikTok in February 2024. We use representative samples covering close to
50% of the US and 94% of the German streaming markets, employing a
difference-in-differences approach to compare the streaming consumption of
songs that were removed from TikTok with those that were not. We find that
UMG's removal of music from TikTok led to a 2-3% increase in streams on audio
platforms for affected songs, indicating substitution effects. However, this
average treatment effect masks significant heterogeneity: older songs and songs
with less promotional support elsewhere saw a decrease in streaming
consumption, suggesting that TikTok helps consumers discover or rediscover
content that is not top of mind for consumers.
