TikTok Has Lined Up Creator Marketing For Its Song-Distribution Tool And Hired An A&R Lead To Sign New Artists As It Gets Ready To Take On The Music Business

TikTok is a crucial instrument for record labels and musicians to promote their work.

Even if a song has been outside the mainstream for a long time, it can still climb up naturally on the app. Additionally, marketers can pay influencers to promote a tune, which will encourage a flurry of user-generated content from the fans. Additionally, some musicians arrange personal listening sessions with TikTok influencers in the hopes that doing so will boost the popularity of their newest tracks on the app.

A global team at the business collaborates with musicians and record labels, bargains licensing agreements with property owners, and develops new strategies for TikTok to turn its cultural influence into recurring income. A trademark application from its parent company ByteDance indicates that the business, which debuted a platform for the distribution of songs in 2022 called SoundOn, may ultimately launch a music streaming service.

According to Kristen Bender, SVP of digital strategy and business development at Universal Music Group, “TikTok has really become a critical part of artist storytelling,” she said in a 2021 webinar on TikTok’s effects on the music business. Our labels have relied heavily on the platform.

The constant emphasis on TikTok can be exhausting for some people. Artists who were requested to create TikToks by their labels, like Halsey and Charli XCX, posted videos in which they expressed their annoyance. According to one performer, Taylor Upsahl, it can be “really stressful” to manage social media promotion, touring, and writing and recording new songs.

And TikTok’s influence on music can be annoying for record labels and other rights holders, especially when the business uses its influence as leverage during licensing talks.

“The argument from the labels’ position is that TikTok wouldn’t have an app without music because that’s what people are using in their videos the most,” Tatiana Cirisano, a music industry analyst and consultant at the research firm MIDiA Research, told Insider. “TikTok’s argument is that the platform is now so crucial to the music business that they can’t afford to not have their music there,”

But it’s not illogical for the business to pay attention to TikTok. Frequently, songs that gain popularity on TikTok go on to rank on the Billboard 100 or Spotify Viral 50. Additionally, a November 2021 study for TikTok by the music analytics firm MRC Data found that 67% of the app’s users are more inclined to look for songs on music-streaming services after hearing them on TikTok.

Labels now use TikTok as a central location to advertise both new albums and older music. Additionally, a fresh group of social media music marketers has emerged to aid in app marketing.

Beyond TikTok, short-form video and music mashups have appeared on Snapchat, YouTube, and Instagram, among other applications. Lyor Cohen, the company’s top music executive, stated to GQ in November that short-form video is one of his main areas of emphasis for the company’s music strategy.

Ted Suh, worldwide head of music partnerships at Snap Inc., told Insider that music is now available on every short-format platform. “The music industry is really finding incremental business value as a result of all this engagement on these types of services, whether it’s using this data to help them get radio play, more spins on Pandora, or even the start of national tours,”

Song promotion agreements between music marketers and influencers have grown to be a significant source of revenue for TikTok creators. When promoting a song by a performer, some users can make hundreds or even thousands of dollars from a single video.

Jesse Callahan, the founder of the nascent marketing company Montford Agency, told Insider that TikTok’s music marketing is enormous. “Labels have played a significant role in putting musicians in the public eye over the past few years. It’s a significant source of income for producers as well.

Paying creators to promote songs on TikTok

Song promo deals between music marketers and influencers have become an important source of income for TikTok creators. Some users can earn hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a single video where they promote an artist’s track.

“Music marketing on TikTok is huge,” Jesse Callahan, founder of the upstart marketing firm Montford Agency, told Insider. “It’s a big way that labels have brought artists into the spotlight the last couple of years. It’s also a big way that creators have made a lot of money.”

Hiring micro influencers for song campaigns

Marketers are increasingly using micro influencers rather than big-name celebrities for music campaigns as TikTok’s user base has increased and the content market has become more saturated.

“The price point for mega stars is extremely high,” Zach Friedman, a cofounder at the upstart record label Homemade Projects, which was purchased by 10K Projects, told Insider. The TikTok formula makes it difficult to predict what will be popular. You could give a micro influencer $200 and their TikTok could receive 10 million views instead of paying a premium for a D’Amelio. Casting a broader net is preferable as a result.

collaborating on song promotions with non-influencer accounts

Record labels frequently pay general-interest accounts to play songs in the backdrop of videos, in addition to the tried-and-true strategy of hiring influencers to start a music trend.

Working with a non-influencer account, such as one that posts up-close pictures of slime or records a hydraulic press smashing things, can be an equally successful way to promote a tune, music marketers told Insider.

Dan Asip, the creator of Acrophase Records, told Insider that using these accounts, such as the hydraulic press accounts, is beneficial for giving the song a chance to sort of work outwards first, and just kind of get in front of people and make the algorithm aware of it.

TikTok music competitions are made to encourage user-generated videos.

Additionally, some marketers are making it possible for social media users who aren’t typically thought of as advocates to be compensated for promoting music.

User-generated video challenges that encourage users with any size following to get paid on a sliding scale for participating in a song or artist campaign are made possible by labels and artists thanks to platforms like Pearpop and Preffy.

“The initial approach to influencer marketing would be to go and pay a few people with large followings, but it would be like throwing a few large logs onto a non-existent fire,” Pearpop cofounder Cole Mason told Insider. “There is a way to actually start the fire with challenges.”

On its website, the company provided a number of examples to further explain the capabilities of GPT-4, including the ability to solve issues like arranging a meeting for three busy people, performing well on exams like the uniform bar exam, and figuring out a user’s creative writing style.

However, the business also recognized its flaws, which included social prejudices and “hallucinations” that it knew more than it actually did.

CEO of Songfluencer Johnny Cloherty stated, “There isn’t always a dance fad or a storyline that makes sense to seed with a tune. It’s simpler for the average user to make a TikTok with an AR filter than it is to create a dance, if you do come up with a cool AR filter.

How record labels track performance on TikTok

In order to help ignite the flames of a trending song when it begins to take off, many record companies have teams specifically tasked with monitoring TikTok.

“Our entire music catalog is effectively tracked on a daily basis,” said Andy McGrath, senior vice president of marketing at Sony Music’s Legacy Recordings, a department devoted to the label’s decades-old song catalog. “We continuously watch for actions, responses, and trends on TikTok.”

Tarek Al-Hamdouni, SVP of Digital Marketing at RCA Records, explained that the record company uses a number of signals to gauge the success of TikTok music campaigns, such as an increase in Spotify streams or changes in YouTube audience size.

“If I see that over the course of a week our audience [on YouTube] went from being primarily 25 to 34-year-old male and a week later the majority is 13 to 24-year-old female, then that’s a pretty easy bridge to connect between those two platforms,” Al-Hamdouni said to Insider.

Writing songs specifically for TikTok

While TikTok is frequently used as a promotional tool for recently released music, some artists use the app even early in the creative process.

By writing songs that directly alluded to the app’s well-liked memes and trends, the Canadian rapper Tiagz (real name Tiago Garcia-Arenas) successfully manipulated the app’s search and content suggestion algorithms to amass 4.2 million fans.

Tiagz said to Insider, “I tried to comprehend the platform. “I kept making these memes because I could see they were effective,”

Remixes and mashups

Remixes are wildly popular on TikTok.

Songs are continuously being remixed on the app, whether they are sped up, slowed down, layered with a clap recording, or mixed with another track.

When a song is remixed, “it can have an entirely different sentiment, application, audience, everything,” according to Jacquelyn Schwartz, head of music partnerships at the advertising firm Creed Media.

Record companies and marketers are working with remix and mashup artists as part of their TikTok song release strategies in an effort to capitalize on the trend. The strategy builds on what musicians have long done to expose their songs to a larger public.

Nima Nasseri, the A&R lead for UMG’s music strategy and tactics team, explained that back in the day, you would go get a bunch of club DJs to remix your tracks so you could appeal to the drum-and-bass market, to the techno market, to the underground market. You want to be able to have people find your record in places where they wouldn’t usually.

TikTok fatigue among artists is rising

Not every artist enjoys spending time on TikTok.

Some musicians have spoken out about the strain they feel to be content creators as a result of the app’s hold on the music business.

According to performer Taylor Upsahl, “TikTok has now become a whole other part of our work that takes up such a significant amount of time. The question of “Okay, cool, how do we find time and energy to now be essentially content creators and influencers?” is one that all artists are still asking.

Inside TikTok’s internal music division

On TikTok, not all songs become popular by accident or through third-party music marketing efforts.

Additionally, TikTok has a department inside devoted to tracking the app’s music trends. The organization’s music team manages relationships with artists and record labels, licensing agreements, and newer products like SoundOn and Resso under the direction of former Warner Music digital head Ole Obermann.

The music operations team at TikTok employs a variety of “promo levers” to increase the popularity of tracks. In order to maximize song discoverability in the app’s search interface, the business can add new tracks to playlists in the “Sounds” section of its app and use keywords on the back end.

Hosting private listening parties with TikTok creators

To market a song before it is released, some artists and labels collaborate with TikTok’s staff to hold private listening sessions with creators.

When Miley Cyrus was getting ready to release her single “Midnight Sky” in the summer of 2020, her team worked with TikTok to arrange two secret Zoom calls with about 15 creators so they could hear the song in advance.

The process needs these creators, according to Olivia Rudensky, founder and CEO of Fanmade, a marketing and fan interaction startup that works on digital strategy with clients like Cyrus and Hailey Bieber. “They really are the audience that’s making or breaking music right now,” the author argues. “They’re just as important as all the relevant stops when you’re doing promo or when you’re going to tastemakers.”

Similar gatherings have been attended by other musicians like Marshmellow, Demi Lovato, and Khalid. The marketing staff of an artist can learn what kinds of videos or song snippets might succeed on TikTok by conducting listening sessions with creators.

How the radio industry is responding to TikTok’s rise

For decades, the radio industry has had to adapt to shifts in how music is consumed, as platforms like MTV, Spotify, and YouTube have changed user habits.

With the arrival of TikTok, many radio stations and their talent have embraced short-form video as both a promotional tool and a resource for discovering new music.

According to Jeffrey Ramsay, an on-air personality at iHeart’s Denver, Colorado, station HITS 95.7, “I ended up on TikTok because I was looking for another way to interact with the listeners of my show, [and] I was looking for a way to increase the listenership of my show.

A dedicated TikTok Radio channel was launched in collaboration with the short-video app by SiriusXM, which streams audio over satellite, digital, and through partnerships with car makers.

Steve Blatter, SiriusXM’s senior vice president and general manager of music programming, told Insider that what his company does is a complement to some of the other music-related digital experiences that are accessible.