TikTok is the Music Industry

Of the 250 million songs on Spotify, only 13% reach over 1000 streams, and only 19% of artists have over 1000 monthly listeners. Whether you're above or below the average, you deserve more listeners. Nothing hurts the heart worse than being excited to upload a song, and you don't get the reception you thought you would. Trust me, I feel the same pain when I share a piece of art on Instagram and barely anyone likes it. But the difference between my IG post and your song is that yours isn't a vanity metric; getting more listeners can propel you into a new stage of your career and earn you more money. You need 2 million streams per month or 450k monthly listeners, $60k a year, so getting a bigger audience is crucial to not being a starving artist.

Changing your marketing strategy is the best way to grow your audience, and you probably need to change yours. Static posts are increasingly getting fazed out and replaced by short videos. The reason for this is that people want interactions to feel more personal. For example, if someone has a conversation with you on a video call vs someone having that same conversation through texts, which will feel more personal and engaging? That's why video content works; it makes the audience feel like they're a part of your life, and feeds their need for realness, whether it's organic or not. The music industry has become very direct to consumers, and it coincides with people wanting more realness, so instead of labels just spending money on a campaign that just promotes the product, the campaign is sold on personality and the artist instead. Now, as someone who creates music, when we combine the push for video content with the need to give yourself directly to the people, we get the 5th biggest social media platform in the world and the only one that prioritizes music as well as video. Tiktok.

85% of all TikTok videos have music, with 1.6 billion monthly active users. A study done by Luminate showed a very high correlation between a song gaining traction on TikTok and streams on other platforms like Spotify. 84% of songs that trended on TikTok ended up in the Billboard 200 in 2024, and the sharing culture, as well as the algorithm, is strong on the platform, resulting in users being 74% more likely to discover new music. Another important note is that TikTok users are twice as likely to become super fans of someone's music, mainly because of the relatability aspect that TikTok videos create if done correctly. This is why it's important to be present on this platform, it has become the cornerstone of the modern music industry and the most important place to market yourself to gain a new audience. 

Hopefully, this got you thinking about using TikTok more. In my next blog, I will provide some tips on how to start and be successful with TikTok instead of aimlessly making videos that won't get any views and help drive people to stream your music. Until then, if you learned something new or were inspired by this post, subscribe to my newsletter.