Resource Integration, Value Co-Creation, and Service-dominant Logic in Music Marketing: The Case of the TikTok Platform

It is a fact that the past research has explored service-dominant logic (S-D logic) and value co-creation in music marketing (Choi & Burnes 2013; Gamble & Gilmorex 2013; Gamble 2018; Saragih 2019), yet a key aspect of S-D logic, namely resource integration, is an unexplored territory and a promising phenomenon of study. A scattering of evidence demonstrates how actors, whether individuals or organisations, in the music industry are making value propositions and providing operand resources to users of platforms (Poell, Nieborg, & Van Dijck 2019), which may result in resource integration and commercial success at a quick pace and on a global scale. Using secondary data in an archival research approach (Welch 2000), this paper examines TikTok, a rapidly growing platform where users integrate short (e.g., under 15 s) clips of commercial music into user generated video content in which users dance to, lip-sync with, accept social challenges, integrate hashtags and create memes based on musical content. Further, there is a discussion on evidence about how music is being used by actors on TikTok in order to argue that (a) S-D logic (Vargo & Lusch 2016) is an insightful perspective through which one is able to understand music marketing; (b) music providers essentially make value propositions with their music that other actors, such as music consumers, can integrate into their lives through platforms like TikTok; (c) changes in technology affect such resource integration and how actors in the music industry can adapt to such change; (d) value-in-social-context (Edvardsson, Tronvoll, & Gruber 2010) is a driver of resource integration by users on the platform; and (e) this example of value created by users on TikTok is just one example of the many types of value which guide action and interaction on today’s music platforms. The discussion and analysis is concluded with several implications for research and practice.