ByteDance is said to still be in talks with Sony, Universal and Warner to license their music catalogs for the service. However, it might arrive sooner than you think. It's believed to be launching as early as December in countries like Brazil, India and Indonesia. Service in the US is also coming, the sources said, although it wouldn't be ready until sometime later.

The company declined to comment.

It wouldn't be out of the question for ByteDance to start a service. TikTok may have a ready-made audience with more than 1 billion users, and music plays a major role in its success -- just look at the abundance of shuffle tutorials and other dance clips. The challenge may be to stand out when many of those people already have streaming music accounts. The social tie-in and a lower price could help, but getting people to switch may still be difficult if users are comfortable with what they already have.