Research
The Research the led to trakr
Before we built anything, we needed to know whether the problem was real.
We analysed every musical recording used on TikTok by 1000+ commercial brands, covering 350,000+ posts across an 18 month window. Every track was identified and mapped back to its rights holders.
The brands in our dataset represent less than 1% of the brands actively using TikTok and social media for commercial purposes. What we found in that 1% was enough to answer our question.
Key Findings
What we discovered was staggering:
Engagement
Value Generated. Nothing Paid.
The estimated EMV captured by brands using music with no clear commercial licence is approximately $56 million, from a dataset representing less than 1% of brands regularly posting on social media.
Artists and rights holders see none of it. These are not edge cases. The posts in our dataset had fewer than 1 million views each, below the threshold where you'd expect to see marketing budget or formal licensing arrangements.
This is systematic, ongoing commercial use at the routine,
day-to-day level of brand social content.
Systemic Use
What we Discovered
More than 79% of the brands we analysed were using music from major and significant independent catalogues with no clear evidence of a commercial licence.
The 8,000+ unique titles involved shows this is not a viral track problem, a handful of songs appearing repeatedly across brand content. It reflects something structural: music selection happens quickly, creatively, and almost entirely outside any licensing decision-making process.
This was not a finding of deliberate circumvention. UGC-style posts with fewer than 1M views show no clear evidence of significant marketing budget, these are routine content decisions, not campaigns with clearance budgets. But routine or not, they represent systematic, ongoing commercial use of music by brands who are capturing real commercial value from it.
Lack of transparency
