April 24 (Reuters) - Ban or no ban, TikTok's partners in

the music and advertising world plan to stick with the massively

popular short-form video platform until the bitter end, seven

industry leaders told Reuters.

The U.S. Senate passed a bill late on Tuesday that gives

Chinese tech firm ByteDance up to a year to divest TikTok, or

the app will be banned altogether. President Joe Biden has

signaled he would sign the bill, capping a four-year battle over

concerns the Chinese government could influence content or

access user data.

TikTok has rivaled larger companies such as Meta Platforms ( META )

for user attention and ad budgets, and its cultural

power is reflected in its ability to catapult emerging artists

into viral hits, changing how young people discover music.

As long as TikTok's users remain engaged with the app,

"advertisers will ride it all the way until the door slams

shut," said Craig Atkinson, CEO of digital marketing agency

Code3.

Adamm Miguest, CEO and founder of Rapid Launch Media, which

creates marketing campaigns designed to make songs go viral,

said he will advise clients to stay on TikTok as long as they

can.

Even Universal Music, whose artists' songs disappeared from

TikTok in March as licensing talks stalled, has resumed

negotiations in recent weeks, according to two people close to

the discussions. The talks reflect the realization that,

whatever the outcome of the legislative process, TikTok is not

going away tomorrow, one of the sources said. Universal declined

to comment.

The app's importance is also underscored by how superstar

Taylor Swift, a Universal artist, defied her label by putting

her music back on TikTok just weeks later.

"I think we have to look and ask, why did Taylor Swift do

that? Even she recognizes the power that TikTok yields," said

Johnny Cloherty, CEO of Songfluencer, a creative marketing firm

that has worked with artists like Dolly Parton and Miranda

Lambert.

Musicians aim to get songs circulating on TikTok or other

platforms such as Instagram Reels and then have users listen to

the music on streaming services. TikTok posts are far more

likely to lead to streams, Miguest said, who has worked with

musicians including Muni Long and Sueco.

"From what I've seen, you have to get 10 to 20 times the

amount of posts on Reels for it to even come close to

translating to what you might get on TikTok," he said.

TikTok also beats Google's YouTube as the most

common music discovery source for teens in the U.S., said

Tatiana Cirisano, a senior music industry analyst for Midia

Research.

TikTok has long said it has not and never would share U.S.

user data with the Chinese government. It is expected to

challenge the bill.

"This is the beginning, not the end of this long process,"

TikTok told staff on Saturday, Reuters previously reported.

"This unconstitutional law is a TikTok ban, and we will

challenge it in court," a spokesperson said on Wednesday. "We

believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side, and we

will ultimately prevail."

The company did not respond to a request for further

comment.

RIVALS ON THE HUNT

Other tech platforms are waiting in the wings for TikTok's

users and ad revenue.

YouTube has been particularly aggressive in going after

TikTok marketing budgets, asking ad agencies to test one of its

advertising products to see how it performs against TikTok

specifically, according to one advertising agency director, who

declined to be named to discuss conversations with the

platforms.

Recent surveys have shown that Gen-Z are increasingly using

TikTok to search for information and businesses rather than

Google. Google did not respond to request for comment.

Spotify ( SPOT ) CEO Daniel Ek told investors on Tuesday that

short-form video content is "a big focus of ours," which would

make its way to the service's music streaming product in 2024.

Even with their commitment to the platform, advertisers are

beginning to shift from their theoretical contingency plans,

which have long been in place, to actively testing plan Bs,

Atkinson said.

"If we imagine a continuum of 'maybe this will happen

someday,' to the idea that TikTok will be turned off, we've

moved one step over," he said.

Both advertisers and music artists have taken steps to test

and diversify their strategies across other platforms, including

Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. "But none of them have quite

garnered the attention that TikTok did," said Gabriel Lister,

managing partner of record label Independent Co.

"The question is whether any of those platforms could

replace TikTok's cultural heft - I don't believe it would simply

be a case of TikTok users migrating over to the competitors,"

said Midia's Cirisano.

Amid the uncertainty, TikTok will host a glitzy evening

presentation for advertisers in New York City next week as part

of an annual event organized by the Interactive Advertising

Bureau (IAB), a trade group.

There were no changes to the plans as of Tuesday, the IAB

said.