TikTok looks hell-bent on becoming an all-encompassing app, a one-stop destination for all your entertainment needs, and not just something you can use to endlessly scroll through a carousel of short-form videos. The platform is already going up against countless other players in the mobile gaming space, but a new patent filed by parent company Bytedance now suggests that TikTok is broadening its scope further. It may also have its crosshairs aimed at the likes of Spotify and Apple Music.

The Chinese internet giant filed a trademark application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for “TikTok Music” in May, as spotted by Business Insider (via The Verge). You can already tell what it's about by that title: the filing says that the potential service will allow users "to purchase, play, share, download music, songs, albums, lyrics, quotes, create, recommend, share his/her playlists, lyrics, quotes, take, edit and upload photographs as the cover of playlists, comment on music, songs, and albums."

That's a lot of social features and is definitely over and above what the current top music streaming services offer. Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music lack support for comments in any form, for example. TikTok Music might give them a real run for their money, especially as TikTok has established itself as the place to go to remix and reuse music when creating videos. It's safe to assume from all this that TikTok intends to set up a whole new app for music over taking the shorter route of integrating things into its existing platform.

If TikTok indeed plans on setting up a separate app, then it'll be interesting to see how much of it will be borrowed from Resso. Resso is another ByteDance product that happens to be very similar to what the patent describes. It's a music streaming platform launched in a few regions back in 2020, with reports saying that it has over 40 million monthly users in India at the moment. It'd sure be tempting for TikTok to use the former's existing framework over starting from scratch. We might have to wait for a while to see how things actually turn out, though, since the patent filing is yet to be assigned to a lawyer and things look to be in their early stages.