Majority of Viral TikTok Hits Sparked by Organic Content
In good news music marketers with small budgets, a new report suggests that two-thirds of viral TikTok hits are sparked by organic content.
The new study, How Artists are Going Viral on TikTok in 2022, was released by ContraBrand.
Its CEO, Sean Taylor, said artists don’t necessarily need label backing or to be placed on dozens of editorial playlists, nor do they need to pay influencers to promote their music.
ContraBrand analysed TikTok’s weekly charts in the first half of 2022 from 20 countries including Australia, the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Brazil, South Korea, Germany, Japan and the Philippines.
This year, 74 artists of 34 nationalities launched their careers on TikTok. Of these, 23 went on to amass one million monthly listeners on Spotify.
Artist-generated content (AGC) drove 35.5% of these breakout hits. Fifteen artists who went viral via AGC were promoting their debut single.
Influencer marketing was only responsible for 9.1%, and paid ads 2.5%.
ContraBrand’s report highlighted how unsigned acts fare well on TikTok.
117 (or 56%) of the 208 artists whose tracks featured in its report were not signed to a label.
They outperformed their 26 major and 55 indie label counterparts in the number of times artists posted a breakout track on average before it reached 100,000 TikTok views.
63% of unsigned artists had viral TikTok hits without running ads or hiring influencers or agencies.
The report stressed, “With the shortest length of time spent on the platform before an artist’s big breakthrough being two months, this goes a long way to quashing the myth of artists blowing up overnight on TikTok.”
ContraBand highlighted the case of INJI, the U.S.-based artist whose breakout summery house track “Gaslight” amassed one million Spotify streams since its release on April 14.
INJI had only joined TikTok two months prior to the release about dancing in New York clubs. She now has 13,400 TikTok followers and 105,000 monthly Spotify listeners.
“INJI is a prime example of how releasing your debut single with next to no TikTok followers can still lead to massive success,” ContraBand said.
Persistence and consistency were the keys: half the acts relying on AGC were active on TikTok for 18 months before their track went viral.
Only 23.5% of the 208 songs had viral TikTok hits due to a trend acting as the catalyst for its initial popularity and success on the platform.
“Many artists are yet to realise how much power is in their own hands and that their success on TikTok will not be defined by starting a trend or through paying influencers to promote their music,” said Head of Research Joshua Coase.
“The 74 artists who landed their biggest hit to date through creating their own organic content in 2022 are testament to this and hopefully act as trailblazers for many more artists to follow.
“This report will challenge people’s perceptions of TikTok and encourage them to think about promotion and content creation differently.”
TikTok, which is dedicated to music – unlike Facebook, Instagram and Twitter— reportedly owns a patent for a music service and has hired staff for a new unit called TikTok Music.
ContraBrand’s predictions are TikTok will become increasingly like a search engine as it experiments with keywords, and the amount of followers will be more important than viral posts.
Influencers will start to charge more than their current rates for their campaigns, videos will move from being filmed on phone cameras to greater production quality, and TikTok will crack down on unofficial remixes/bootleg recordings.