In the last few months we have seen the Spotify charts being taken over by previously unknown artists. Many people might wonder how these songs have been able to compete with major artists and their large music studios behind them. It is because of a relatively new platform called TikTok
TikTok is a Chinese-owned social media platform that allows users to create and share videos. Initially released in 2016, it is extremely popular among teenagers and now has about 800 million active monthly users. Videos are limited to 60 seconds, but the majority are even shorter, in the range of just 5-15 seconds. Users spend an average of 52 minutes per day on the platform. The short length of these videos means users consume a large number of videos in a very short period of time, making it relatively easy to go viral compared to other platforms. Even using conservative estimates, users would often consume over 100 videos daily.
Now, the question is why is this relevant for the music industry? Well if you look at the top trending songs on Spotify, outside of songs from major artists, the majority of trending songs have become popular from being used on TikTok.
In the above image you can see that 8 of the top ten trending songs in Ireland have become popular through TikTok. This is because videos on TikTok are often made as a dance or reaction to songs. These songs then become popular on the platform and other users make videos with those songs. This leads to people searching for the full song on other platforms, such as Spotify and allows songs that were released months or even years ago to suddenly go viral.
This is an exciting opportunity for music creators, especially smaller artists, to put there music out there in front of a huge audience. The relative ease of going viral on TikTok means that music creators should adopt TikTok as part of their strategy. They should be creating videos with their songs as the sound, with the hope of getting other users to see their video and then using that song themselves to create their own videos. This would allow their song to go viral and they could potentially become a famous musician overnight.