In addition to being the most downloaded application of the year of the confinement and its mediatic judicial battles with various governments, TikTok, the platform of Chinese origin that allows you to create and share short videos, ends 2020 as a revelation and unthinkable protagonist of the music ecosystem and the recording industry.
In its first annual music report in the US, the company announced that more than 176 songs exceeded one billion visits within the platform in 2020. In passing, it details that more than 70 new artists who became known thanks to the application signed with record companies. Among them, potential stars like Claire Rosinkranz and Priscilla Block.
Impressive figures that confirm the traction that the app currently has among an audience -especially- teenagers, and that has motivated in recent months various labels to sign license agreements with the company for the use of their music. In Chile, the subsidiaries of the main record companies have begun to use the app as a tool to promote their artists, while local hits, such as Harry Nach’s Tak Tiki Tak, inspired more than 13 million content at the time on the platform.
“TikTok became the reference platform in the United States for the discovery of music, as well as the launching of great successes by artists of all genres,” says in its balance sheet the company, which has promoted the careers and planetary diffusion of artists such as Megan Thee Stallion (the most listened to of the year on TikTok) and Doja Cat, as well as the reproduction figures of figures such as Drake, who with his viral hit Toosie slide generated one billion visits in April in just three days.
It’s not all about new artists: the dance and viral challenges that TikTok drives have also resurrected old hits by John Lennon, Queen and Fleetwood Mac, which thanks to a popular video from a user a few months ago generated more than 600 thousand replicas within. of the platform and multiplied the reproductions of his classic Dreams in other services, such as Spotify and YouTube.
“TikTok is not just a hit machine, it has also created completely new audiences for catalog material,” he told Variety. William Gruger, music editor of the app in EE.UU.
Although for now the musical phenomenon around TikTok is concentrated in the Anglo world and in Asia, mainly, 2021 is projected as a year of consolidation for the company within the record industry. Thus, in addition to the contracts that the Chinese firm has signed during the year with “majors” such as Sony Music and ICE -the pan-European music licensing body-, with the aim of formalizing a relationship so far mutually beneficial, the fact that others Platforms such as Snapchat and Reddit have come out to compete with their own TikTok replicas confirms the projection that the model has for the future.
For now, the big question that remains pending around the short videos app is how it will consolidate a formula that makes it profitable for labels, publishers and creators, and not only as a platform for dissemination and promotion of other applications that do monetize , as it has been until now. This, considering that about 70 or 80 percent of the income of the labels currently comes from the digital world, according to a Chilean record executive.
“Toosie Slide ” – Drake
“WAP” (feat. Megan Thee Stallion) – Cardi B
“Therefore I Am” – Billie Eilish
“Lets Link” – WhoHeem
“Say I Yi Yi” – Ying Yang Twins
“Where Is the Love?” – The Black Eyed Peas
“Whole Lotta Choppas” – Now Baby
“Adderall (Corvette Corvette)” – Popp Hunna
“Mood Swings” – Pop Smoke
“THICK” – DJ Chose & Beatking
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