TikTok: Where new music is discovered

We have already pointed out last year that TikTok is a trendsetter in the music industry. Our new data has proven this once again and notably also shown that many listeners are discovering new songs via TikTok. So, it’s becoming harder and harder for musicians to ignore the video app completely. At the very least, you should make your music available on TikTok; even better if you are active on it yourself.

Surveys show: A lot of new music is discovered via TikTok

A survey conducted among 1,000 TikTok users showed that the respondents consider the app to be their second-most important tool for discovering new music. TikTok is still just behind Spotify but in front of YouTube, Apple Music, and SoundCloud. 40% of respondents also mentioned having discovered new music genres on TikTok. The two genres showing the most music discoveries are, rather unsurprisingly, hip hop and pop. Around half of the songs are found via the For You page.

TikTok conducted a similar survey among users from the UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. Here, 80% of respondents indicated that they discovered new music via TikTok. 56% do so via the For You page. Because of this, TikTok is therefore convinced that many users also stream or buy the newly discovered songs afterwards. However, they cannot yet back this up with numbers. Still, in their view, users are discovering even more songs on TikTok than on other streaming services.

Short attention span?

One reason for this, is certainly that on TikTok, you can switch from one video to the next in a matter of seconds and thus also from one song to the next. Since the videos are only a maximum of 60 seconds long, listeners are immediately presented with the catchiest part of the track. However, the fact that you can listen to dozens of songs within a short period of time is certainly not conducive to the attention span.

But there is good news, as well: 84% of respondents actually added the newly discovered songs to a playlist so they can listen to them again later. This gives at least some indication that things are not as short-lived as they may seem at first glance.

New up to 3 minutes long videos on TikTok

Another factor which might counteract TikTok’s ephemerality is their plan to extend the maximum video length once more from 60 seconds to three minutes.

Considering that nowadays most songs tend to be shorter, in most cases, this would be enough time to fit an entire track into one video. With the change, TikTok can simultaneously become a direct challenge to YouTube. While many other social medial platforms are copying TikToks short video format, TikTok itself is taking a step in the opposite direction. It remains to be seen whether the users will take to this or whether they will prefer the bite-sized clips.

At iGroove, you can have your songs made available on TikTok so that people can use them in their videos. You will be paid for each video that contains your song and not based on the number of views that the videos generate.