As competition heats up, TikTok announces six new interactive music effects for creators

TikTok today is doubling down on its roots as a music-backed creation app with the launch of a half dozen new music effects for creators. The effects, which offer interactivity, visualizations, animations and more, will roll out over the next few weeks, starting with the launch of Music Visualizer. This effect is now available to TikTok’s global user base and runs real-time beat tracking to animate a retro greenscreen landscape, the company says.

The effect was added to TikTok’s Creative Effects tray yesterday and there are already more than 28,000 videos created using the new feature. The effect results in videos featuring a purple sky with multiple moons (or planets?) in the background, where the grid on the ground pulses up and down with the music.

Music Visualizer works with any sounds in TikTok’s music library and has also been adopted by the electronic dance music duo AREA21 who used Music Visualizer to tease their new track “La La La.” Unfortunately, their use of the effect hides the animation behind one of their own. But several other creators showcase the effect better.

Other effects on the way include:

• Music Machine, which offers an interactive set of tools that will allow users to control the real-time rendering of MIDI loops for different music layers. There will also be a BPM slider for real-time adjustments; five, one-shot sound effects; and dynamic visual responses for the video of your recorded music.
• Delayed Beats, which recreates the freeze-frame effect that’s already popular on TikTok while aligning transitions to the beat of the music.
• Text Beats, which allows creators to add animated text overlays to their video that transition in sync with the beat of any sound from TikTok’s library.
• Solid Beats, which add visual effects that sync to the beat of any song.
• Mirror Beats, which align display transitions with the beat of any song from TikTok’s library.

The launch of the new features follow the arrival of several new TikTok competitors from major social networks, including Instagram (Reels), Snapchat (Spotlight) and YouTube (Shorts). The additions of the features help to demonstrate how far behind these rivals are in terms of competing on the product experience. While the newcomers to the short-form video space may have launched their own set of basic creation tools, they’re lacking the larger libraries of creative effects that make TikTok fun to use, as well as appealing to those who are more specifically interested in its music features.

All the new effects will be rolled out to the dedicated “Music” tab within TikTok’s Creative Effects tray, as they become globally available.