TikTok has helped a number of musicians get off the ground. The latest success story will have to be the popular track “Old Town Road” by country trap singer Lil Nas X. The short video platform was fundamental in spreading around the word and TikTok sees a massive opportunity here. Thus, it has now launched an app for artists to upload music, track their use in videos, and much more.
Dubbed TikTok for Artists (website), the app is designed to give musicians a dedicated app to grow their audience with data and insights into how the songs are used in short videos. You’re going to find a music upload and content management section. You will be able to edit a song clip best suited for short videos here.
The highlight of TikTok for Artists is the Analytics and Trends section. This will be a portal into the number of track plays, sections of your track used (possibly, will need to sign up for testing the app), and how often users are using your track in their clips. You will also see the total video plays for each of your tracks through this app.
There’s also an Artist Spotlight feature, which helps surface original music from artists on the app. You will get a more prominent placement to reach a wider audience and grow your streaming numbers. This feature is currently live in Japan and Korea.
Coming back to Lil Nas X, he marketed the track as a meme and it spread like wildfire. It was unstoppable and garnered over 67 million plays from thousand of TikTok videos (you can find them under the#yeehaw hashtag) in the past few months. But, the number will have gone up considerably as Lil Nas X collaborated with many artists including Billy Ray Cyrus, BTS’ Rap Monster, and others.
TikTok has grown massively over the past year and now, its competitors are working on clones to offer similar video features. Ahem, Instagram Reels. Reports of Google joining TikTok in the short video space have also cropped up just recently. While others are still trying to emulate its success, TikTok is making strides to launch education campaigns, a dedicated smartphone for content creation, and possibly even a music streaming service.
If the company plans to launch a music service, the TikTok for Artists platform will surely come in handy down the road. It will already have the groundwork for new artists to join the streaming service and grow their reach via short videos. So, do you like the idea? Do let us know your opinion in the comments below.
