Why Your TikTok Viewers Don’t Stream Your Songs

This is why your TikTok viewers don’t stream your songs. I hear from musicians all the time, “I had a viral video where I played my song, and only 3% of the people streamed it. I thought TikTok was how you promote music.”

Sure enough, when I check their profile, they have no link in bio. Half the time, even when they have a link in bio, it doesn’t say to stream the song at the top. It says it after a link to buy their favorite scented candle. Also, at the top of your link in bio, you should say to stream that song, have a link to your Spotify, or have the line from the song that’s going viral on TikTok in that link in bio.

Seriously, I suggest link in bios from Koji since they look sick like this, and you’ll get way more clicks than those boring Linktrees.

Optimizing TikTok Videos for Music Promotion

But if the melody repeats twice in your hook, you can try making two versions, one with a longer and one with a shorter hook, and see what works best. Putting up many versions of your song is often what drives them going viral, and we really can’t tell unless we experiment.

Leveraging Instagram for Music Promotion

Instagram exists to fill in TikTok’s flaws. Straight up, one of the biggest complaints musicians have about TikTok is when they announce their album or tour, you know, the big events that these musicians really care about, those posts do way worse than when you dunk your head in a toilet or any other type of TikTok you make. And yes, I see this for the hugest artists on here. You can often see a hundred times disparity between announcement posts and their more viral content.

But you have to remember, TikTok only cares about spreading the most engaging content. So unless you make your news fit in that format, it’s going to fail to spread. But this is why you should also not give up on Instagram since TikTok lets you link that in your profile. And the grid stories are still the most effective way to keep fans up on your latest news, and they can complement each other if you have them feed each other.

Gaining Followers on TikTok

Want to get more follows on TikTok? You need to remind people who you are with more cues than just your face. Having a background, particularly with a signature item in the background, or wearing something that is recognizable and consistent like a hat, a certain hairstyle, glasses, or style of dress goes super far. Having some sort of visual signature where people will think, “Oh, it’s that person with the thing,” will do wonders for how effective you are at gaining follows.

The Earworm Era of Music

We are no longer in the TikTok era of music; we are now in what I’m calling the earworm era of music. What’s working is odd TikToks to get songs to blow up. Artists are pushing their own music by making tons of TikToks to the hook, as opposed to the TikTok era when it was other users and influencers making videos of artist songs. Now the power is in the artist’s hands to break their own songs, which is a big deal.

I keep talking to musicians who are blown away by other musicians making 30 to 60 TikToks to finally make their song go viral. And well, you can’t really argue that it is working for some people to do numerous clips of their music video and tons of lip-sync videos to push their song until it blows up.

Why This Strategy Works

But why does this work? Well, think of it this way. Songs aren’t like normal TikToks. We all have had an earworm of a hook. It took a few listens to get into our head, and if you hear that hook a few times, you may be prone to watching the next video even more. And if you start to like the hooks of the song, then it drives up the playthrough rate on the TikTok, and it gets spread more to more people. So making tons of videos with the same hook of your song over and over, well, it seems to make sense why it keeps being TikTok gold.

Optimizing Your TikTok Strategy

This is why your TikTok earworm isn’t working. One, you need to be hashtagging micro-genres of music. Hashtagging hip hop or EDM is too big. Find niches on TikTok and study other similar users’ hashtags. Two, your song isn’t clearly labeled in your TikTok, or TikTok doesn’t recognize it. Add your song using CapCut from the song library to make sure people can look it up. A recent study showed 64% of TikTok users rarely have a clue what they’re listening to. Three, capture the lyrics on the screen since it increases watch time. And lastly, make sure your video has motion in it. Tell a story in it. People get engaged by storytelling.

Engaging with Your Audience

If you’re having trouble growing on here, this is a nice trick. Right before you make a post, go through all your recent videos and reply back to any comment or like them. That way, when you put up your next video, if the user has recently interacted with you, well, they’re way more likely to get you in their feed with your new post and keep building a relationship with you.

Improving Your TikTok Views

So many of you can’t get your TikTok, reels, or shorts past a couple hundred views, but here’s how to fix that. Stop using big, crowded, broad hashtags. You want micro-genre and niche hashtags. Instead of emo, you want things like elder emo or Midwest emo. For the love of God, don’t use hashtag musician or FYP. The reason the big TikTokers can get away with that or not using hashtags is the algorithm understands who to show them to, but they don’t know what to do with you, which is why you have no views.

Next, unfollow your friends who aren’t musicians similar to you and follow them from a personal account. Only follow musicians in your community. Now comment, like, and bookmark their TikToks that you really like. And if you don’t know how to find those musicians you’re similar to, you should watch this video I made on how to find them here. But one last thing, you should also duet, stitch, or repost the artists that are similar to you and that you’re friends with. After that, things should start going better for you.

Developing Effective TikToks

A lot of musicians ask me what they can do to promote their music on TikTok. This is real easy. I have three questions you could ask yourself to develop TikToks that could help you grow. The first question is, what’s something you hear in someone else’s music you think other people aren’t noticing? TikTok is all about pointing out those hidden parts of music we all love and getting a deeper understanding of it.

Next, what’s something you’re doing musically you think people may not know about? Explain to the audience a part of your song and show them how you did it. This is a prime advertisement for them to go to your song and go deeper with it after they watch this. What’s a lyric or an emotion you made musically that you could explain to the world? Explain what a line or two of your lyrics mean and get vulnerable and allow people to connect with you. Tell the story around it and give fans and new listeners a greater understanding of your music.

Optimal Length for TikTok Videos

Musicians are always asking me, “What’s the optimal length for a TikTok where they’re lip-syncing their song or clipping a part of their music video?” Since every lame influencer person is always running around saying, “eight seconds is the optimal time.” But here’s what matters when it’s music. Figure out how much of your hook needs to be in your TikTok to get in someone’s head. That is really what matters when making an intriguing video. But if the melody repeats twice in your hook, you can try making two versions, one with a longer and one with a shorter hook, and see what works best, since putting up many versions of your song is often what drives them going viral. And we really can’t tell unless we experiment.

Creating Compelling TikToks

So many of you are wondering why your TikToks or shorts aren’t hitting, and what so many of you miss is that it’s way more compelling to say why you did something that’s happening in your video since a lot of the time, well, the what is pretty obvious and you’re not adding much context or even sometimes embarrassing yourself by saying you wrote the song of the summer. But if the why is vulnerable or relatable, you open up a bonding moment with the viewer that makes them way more likely to enjoy your song. So popping a sentence or two of why on top of a lip-sync video or something else could be what helps make your video pop off.

Effective POV TikToks

POV TikToks are really driving songs into the TikTok algorithm lately, but there’s a trick to make them really effective. As I’ve told you, the best way to get people to stream your songs is to tell them the emotion they would feel if they listened to your song. So if it’s an EDM banger, make a POV showing the club getting wild. If it’s a sad ballad, show someone bawling their eyes out. You can make numerous POV videos for the hook of your song reiterating the emotions that’ll make the audience feel if they hit play on it, and it will get them to jump to Spotify or YouTube and stream the song to hear the full thing if you show them an emotion that they’d rather feel.

Self-Promotional TikToks

For so long, self-promotional videos weren’t blowing up on TikTok, reels, or shorts, but now they’re really doing numbers for so many musicians. But there are a few tricks you should know. All the TikToks you make should use the same hook. So even if the footage is from your music video and you’re playing a different part of the song of the music video, you should still use the hook as the music for that TikTok. Second, if the lyrics are strong or hard to make out, use the app captions to make captions of the lyrics to draw people in and make sure the song and video loop perfectly on beat so that it’s more likely to be played repeatedly.

Using TikTok Stories

How should musicians be using TikTok stories? TikTok is rolling out stories to users, and so many of you are asking me if you should just put what’s on your Instagram stories here. And the truth is, the feature isn’t really fully fleshed out yet. It isn’t functioning the same as Instagram stories or Snapchat stories used to, but for now, I would focus on putting whatever news and announcements you have here on a regular basis, especially if you have a TikTok going viral so those who are new to your profile could see what you’re up to.

The Importance of TikTok Influencer Marketing

I feel like at any point in time there’s an obvious trend happening that most people are in denial of. In every single genre, TikTok influencer marketing is the hidden hand making songs popular. It’s where people are blowing up by putting very little money. If you look where the music business is spending its money, it’s here. I haven’t seen musicians changing their strategies to incorporate it. Admittedly, I’ve been experimenting on a few campaigns, and it’s been crazy to watch how few dollars we spend to get so many people to listen to a song.

I’m consistently shocked how many musicians complain when they have quick viral moments, or their song gets a lot of streams, but then no one follows them on Instagram or whatever social media. But what most of these musicians have in common is they either don’t have many other songs out that people rinse or they haven’t made a music video. The reason music videos are important is they build relationships with audiences that get them curious to know more about you. And you know who gets followed on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok? People who’ve generated curiosity fans want to know more about and build a relationship with, and music videos are the ultimate way to do that.

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