Nowadays, TikTok holds a prominent space on our phones; its quick content creation and accessibility; TikTok has become a household name. We cannot deny that TikTok is the path to quick stardom. Thanks to the prominent practices of TikTok marketing, it acted as a prominent platform for promoting music artists and record labels, especially in times of the pandemic.
Whether new or old songs or any other type of multimedia content can rise quickly, even if it has been outside the mainstream for a long time, the TikTok influencers play an important role in promoting the music and taking it to the masses. Moreover, the fact that TikTok became a go-to platform for content consumption led to an increase in the appeal of the newer content.
The artists’ fraternity benefited the most from this content consumption pattern. Several artists started to set up private sessions and TikTok influencers, which also turned out to be one of the easy ways to get more followers on TikTok.
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The Music Industry Recognizes TikTok’s Potential
Even the industry does not shy away from the fact that TikTok has immense potential to do wonders for the music industry. Commonly, the songs trend on TikTok charts on Billboard 100 or Spotify Viral 50. On top of it, 67% of the app’s users search about the songs on the music streaming services after listening to them on TikTok.
Apart from being a platform that just helps get more likes, TikTok has become an eminent hub to promote new releases, leading to a new unit of social media marketers have started supporting promotional efforts on the application.
Several prominent brands and popular influencers have started to pay creators to promote songs on TikTok. As a result, music promotional deals between music labels or marketers and influencers have become an important source of income for TikTok. Not only the TikTok, but several users are also earning thousands of dollars by promoting an artist’s new track.
How Influencers are a Big Helping Hand for Song Campaigns?
Influencers do a lot more than just get free TikTok likes. As the user base of TikTok has grown over time, music marketers are now turning to influencers over major superstars for song campaigns. The major reason superstars are no longer a prime choice is that they are expensive. Zach Friedman, the co-founder at Upstart, says that it is difficult to predict what will be successful on TikTok, so it is not a wise decision to spend a hefty amount of dollars on superstars. You can pay around $200 to an influencer and get 10 million likes.
Apart from influencers, brands use non-influencer accounts to get popular on TikTok. Though the strategy to hire influencers has immense potential, the brands are also paying common interest accounts to put the music in the background of the videos. Working with non-influencer accounts is an equally effective way to work with influencer accounts. For instance, many accounts make hydraulic press videos, and they have immense popularity and following; collaborating with such accounts helps increase reach in no time.
The Magic of TikTok Music Challenges
TikTok music challenges were bliss to the music artists and influencers as well. Many of the TikTok music challenges went viral on other social media platforms. What good do these music challenges do to get more TikTok views? It enticed marketers to open the door for social media users who would not traditionally be considered influencers to promote the music. For instance, platforms like Pearpop and Preffy allow the record labels and artists to create user-generated video challenges. Various songs like Levitating by Dua Lipa or Wap by Cardi B benefitted hugely, thanks to TikTok music challenges.
Creators’ Private Shows
Private shows are a dream for every artist; it adds a golden feather to their portfolio. As stated above, some artists collaborated with TikTok influencers or creators to set up private listening shows to promote new songs.
Let’s talk about an actual case; during the launch of Miley Cyrus’s single “Midnight Sky,” her team partnered with TikTok to conduct two private zoom shows with 15 creators to give them an audio session before the launch worldwide. Taking inspiration from this, several prominent artists such as Khalid, Demi Lovato, and Marshmellow joined those similar events. Hence, running a listening session with creators helps the artists’ marketing team push the content to a wider audience.
TikTok Enhances Accessibility of Music
The artists can upload their original music to TikTok whenever they like to shop for TikTok views. Thanks to TikTok’s internal music division, which monitors the trendy songs that are doing well and adds certain keywords related to the search term to increase the content reach.
Take the example of Lil Nas X, whose popularity is credited to TikTok as after this viral song, “Old Town Road,” dropped, he gained extreme recognition, which gave a head start to his career. The song climbed to the top of the Billboard Top 100 chart in no time.
But Lil Nas X is not the only one; as per the TikTok, over 70 artists gone viral on the platform got deals from established records. The most distinguishing benefit of TikTok is that you do not need to be a fresh face or an undiscovered talent to get famous. All you need is the talent and understanding of TikTok marketing, and you are good to go. For instance, Fleetwood Mac’s song “Dreams’ which was released in 1977, got viral as “the cranberry song” after the TikTok influencer Nathan Apodaca lip-synched the song while skateboarding in 2020. Soon the video got viral, and “Dreams” shot to the 21st spot on Billboard Top 100 chart.
TikTok has changed the entire landscape of the music industry, and we are yet to witness drastic changes that would let the new artists emerge and establish their identities.