What Is TikTok?
TikTok (formerly known as musical.ly) is a social media platform for creating, sharing and discovering short music videos (think Karaoke for the digital age). It’s currently the third most downloadable non-gaming app in the world. In fact, it just reached 1.5 billion downloads!
It’s an outlet to express yourself through singing, dancing, comedy, and lip-syncing by recording videos 15 seconds or less and sharing them across a community. Users are challenged to make content that’s real, raw, and candid. This is not a platform for keeping up appearances. When you’re on TikTok, real and quirky is what you get.
How Is TikTok different From other social platforms?
Instead of an app built around personal connections, TikTok is an app centered around spreading cultural trends. Users are encouraged to participate in a constant stream of challenges and prompts. Record your own personal spin on “eating to a beat,” or a dance move called, “the woah.” The more unique your spin to the challenge, the better. The goal is to stand out in the challenges and to gain fans from the videos you create.
A TikTok news feed isn’t populated by friends, but rather by others who have participated in recent trending challenges. “Imagine a version of Facebook that was able to fill your feed before you’ve friended a single person,” The New York Times’ John Herrman recently wrote. “That’s TikTok.”
Users can rapidly grow their fan base from 500 to 60,000 within a week, not based on their circle of friends, but based on the creative, unique videos they post.
Get Your Track Added To TikTok Videos
As an artist, TikTok is a great way to promote your songs. Users upload their videos, then choose from a library of music on the app to use as the soundtrack to their creation.
A TikTok promotional campaign is built around a term called “Remuse.” Remuse is the number of times someone creates a video using an existing “sound” in the TikTok sound library. “Sounds” can be songs that are ingested to the platform.
The goal is to get as many users as possible to use your track as the background music for the videos they create. Our promotions team focuses on getting your song placed by some of TikTok’s biggest influencers–users who already have massive followings. We focus on quality over quantity. Getting a dozen major influencers to add your track to their videos can prove priceless.
There are many examples of artists who are breaking on this platform. For example, in a recent Playlist Pump PR Agency campaign, artist Plaid Brixx gained a total reach of 14 million people and was added to 500+ TikTok videos by some of the biggest influencers.
Other notable artists like Ava Max (Sweet But Psycho) and Lil Nas X (Old Town Road) have TikTok to thank for part of their massive success.
Does your track fit the TikTok platform?
Not all tracks fit the TikTok platform well. You want to comb through your songs and find a clip that has memorable, catchy lyrics. Watch through videos on TikTok and take notice of the types of song clips users are adding to their videos.
Any genre of music can go viral. It’s not so much about the category of music, but rather the “stickability” factor of the song. The more creative the concept, the better. The more memorable the lyrics, the better.
What’s next on TikTok?
In 2020, TikTok will roll out their unique streaming platform, predicted to become Spotify’s #1 competition in the coming year. By the end of 2020, it’s quite possible that it will be the biggest app on the planet. Period.
Can a TikTok campaign generate Spotify streams?
Viewers won’t be redirected from the TikTok platform to Spotify, but will be redirected to Apple Music. (Keep in mind Apple Music pays more for streams than Spotify.) However, if a user has Spotify (or any other DSP for that matter) and sees the track title and artist name on TikTok, they can look that up on Spotify, which translates into streams.
Don’t sleep on Tik Tok which will potentially go down as the biggest app in the world by 2020! If you’re not promoting your music on TikTok, you could be leaving millions of fans on the table.
Our A&R team can help you choose your best track for TikTok promotion. Submit your track for review HERE.