How Amazon Music & Twitch Will Benefit With TikTok Buy-Out

There are dozens of consortiums and companies and bidding to buy TikTok before the Trump administration turns off its lights in the US.

The decision was to have been made by April 5 after being extended from January. Then, online retail powerhouse Amazon made an 11th-hour offer, and President Trump extended the target date by another 75 days to June to consider all bids properly.

Trump explained: “My administration has been working very hard on a deal to save TikTok, and we have made tremendous progress.

“The deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed.”

He made it clear: “The decision is going to be my decision" and repeated, “I’d like to see TikTok remain alive."

In the meantime, the decision is made harder with Trump now threatening to double tariffs on China to 100 per cent after it counteracted. The word is that TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, told the White House that China will no longer approve the deal unless the tariffs dispute is settled.

AMAZON FACTOR

What is behind Amazon’s multi-billion dollar offer? The sharing of its consumer data and technology with its own music assets, such as Amazon Music and Twitch, is obvious.

Amazon Music has 52.5 million users in the US (80 million worldwide). Male users spend an average of 26 hours and 6 minutes on it per month, while female users spend an average of 17 hours and 1 minute. Last year, it generated $4.08 billion in revenue.

In contrast, TikTok has 170 million monthly US active users (1,925 billion worldwide). The average daily time spent on TikTok has more than doubled from 27 minutes in 2019 to a very impressive 58 minutes in 2024.

This battle extends to Australia where Amazon Music has 4 million subscribers, and TikTok boasts 8.5 million monthly active users.

Amazon Music will be eying TikTok’s new service, TikTok For Artists. 

It offers analytics tools for artists to see how their music is performing on the platform, which content is most buzzing with fans, and ways to promote their music.

It was in beta for a long time before recently launched in five markets – Australia, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. This leaves a hole in the United States, although Spotify and SoundCloud already have that service.

TikTok For Artists is its latest foray for the Beijing-based app into the music industry. 

It follows the music distribution platform SoundOn, and the ill-fated music streaming service TikTok Music, which was tested in a couple of countries – including Australia, Brazil and Indonesia – and folded.

Amazon’s acquisition of TikTok will also be a benefit to video gaming livestreamer Twitch, which it bought in August 2014 for $970 million.

Twitch is currently in an expansion mode of its content as its active streamers fell to 7.7 million in January 2025, and video streaming platform Twitch had approximately 7.7 million active streamers, down from a peak of 9.89 million in January 2021 during the pandemic lockdown.

This year, Twitch announced more changes as greater mobile experience, improvements in video quality, speed content loads and sharing, easier ways to edit and share clips, and expanded monetization for most streamers.

Sharing the Amazon umbrella with its rival could see it tap in on TikTok’s technology.

On a wider basis, acquiring TikTok would give Amazon access to short-video marketing and e-commerce power to drive users to seven million online retailers which generates billions in sales.  The TikTok Store generated $9 billion in 2024.

Amazon tried its own TikTok clone, Inspire, in 2022, but it failed and was scrapped in February.

Without a doubt, Amazon is the top place-to-go when consumers are searching for products. But it’s made some moves towards helping them find new items and experiences.

"It has certainly made some inroads into becoming a place for consumer entertainment and discovery, which led to impulse purchases,” GlobalData Managing Director Neil Saunders explained to CBS MoneyWatch.

“But this is very much the preserve of TikTok and TikTok Shop. This more impulse-driven part of the market is faster growing than more established e-commerce channels."

Yahoo Finance noted: “Buying TikTok would give Amazon instant access to the social commerce market. It would also put Amazon on the same playing field as other mega tech companies like Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, and Microsoft, owner of LinkedIn.”

For this reason, retail rivals Microsoft and Walmart also made bids for TikTok when the first harangue began in 2020 to find US owners. But the deal fell through.

AMONG OTHER BIDDERS

Among the 2025 suitors, Oracle Corporation seems to have the strongest chance. 

The tech leader has been hosting TikTok’s US data since 2022 after ByteDance started shifting its US data when lawmakers began expressing concern about Chinese access to US data.

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison is pretty tight with Trump, who has previously stated he would be happy for Oracle to have the winning bid.

Also raising the excitement level is a consortium led by comic creator crowd funder Zoop and cryptocurrency foundation Hedera with a group of investors. 

Zoop’s co-founder, Tim Stokely, also founded the adult entertainment platform OnlyFans. The other founder, RJ Phillips, has big plans for TikTok.

He shared: “Our bid for TikTok isn’t just about changing ownership; it’s about creating a new paradigm where both creators and their communities benefit directly from the value they generate.”

The People’s Bid is gathering US citizens to join in a $20 billion bid – including policy makers and tech execs – to take control of TikTok and restructure to “prioritize privacy and give users control over their date”. Click here to see how they see the TikTok of the future.

Among other bidders (or those who’ve expressed interest) are the Perplexity AI consortium that includes the $1 trillion asset manager Blackstone, a consortium backed by social media influencers like MrBeast, California-based mobile technology company AppLovin and payroll company Employer.com.

There is a consortium that includes Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and TV’s Shark Tank investor Kevin O'Leary. Bobby Kotick, one-time CEO of Activision Blizzard, apparently approached ByteDance directly and told The Wall Street Journal his bid was for “hundreds of billions of dollars.”

WHAT NOW?

An aspect of America’s suspicion of TikTok being a spy for the Chinese Government means that the US consumer data stays in the US.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia warned, “If TikTok algorithms reside in Beijing, it’s all a sham.”

Trump has a number of options of what to do, depending on what ByteDance and Beijing allow to happen.

Aside from a sale or ban, he can keep Bytedance on as the owner while all US data is strictly controlled by an American company. 

American TikTok users won’t be able to upgrade the app, which means it will soon become irrelevant and unusable.

The likes of YouTube and Instagram are already courting them to come over.

This is targeting influencers and plans to introduce TikTok features. 

YouTube Shorts, for instance, expanded the maximum length from one minute to three. They're also preparing to introduce more staff and financial resources to cope with an influx of TikTok refugees.

The burden will be on app stores and cloud service providers, who cannot "distribute, maintain, or update" the app. If they forget, they’ll be fined up to $5,000 per user. These could be huge, given the millions of users involved.