It’s still very possible to go viral on TikTok

The TikTok community has grown tremendously in the past few years, with users racking up billions of followers. Did you miss your shot to blow up? Not yet, writes Bobby Owsinski.

by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0

TikTok is getting as commercialized as any other social platform as it matures. When that happens, most of the early adopter creators whose content helped build the platform’s popularity get squeezed out. TikTok may be bucking that trend though, as some new data indicates that you can still go viral on the service far easier that other services.

When a platform is in its growth period, new subscribers need something to fill their feeds and because there’s not much content yet available, it’s easy to get a place on their feeds. Once growth slows down there’s so much competition that it becomes a lot more difficult to get in front of that new audience. That means that creators must resort to advertising, or, even worse, help from an influencer.

New data presented by the Cinc Music Group and consulting agency Contraband shows that TikTok still hasn’t tapped out of viral possibilities for artists, though. It found that nearly two-thirds of viral music hits on on the platform come from organic posting by the artist and other TikTok users without having to resort to advertising or influencers.

Among the tracks on the TikTok Top 200 that eventually reached over a million Spotify streams, 63.8% were from organic posting by the artist and other TikTok users, while 35.5% were artist-generated content and only 9.1% were driven by influencer marketing and only 2.5% were sparked by paid ads.

The report looked at the weekly charts of 20 countries, including the US, Australia, Canada, the UK, Brazil, Germany, South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines.

The good news is that the study found that artist-generated content is the most common method for artists to go viral and is the easiest way to break into the music industry. According to an article on the subject in Music Business News, “This year alone, 74 artists have been able to launch their own careers through posting their own content on TikTok, and of the total, 23 have been able to amass at least 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify.”

So the good news is that if you want to go viral online, and get your foot in the door of the music business as a result, TikTok is still a great way to do it.

Bobby Owsinski is a producer/engineer, author and coach. He has authored 24 books on recording, music, the music business and social media.