How can you use Tik Tok effectively to promote your music?

Tik Tok is an application that lets users share short, entertaining videos.

Tik Tok was launched in 2016 by Chinese company ByteDance and has since become a runaway success, particularly with teenagers. The application, which has been installed more than 3 billion times worldwide, has 1 billion monthly active users, including 7 million French users on a daily basis.

As an artist, it’s important to know how to use Tik Tok effectively to promote your music. Tik Tok offers many opportunities for artists to gain exposure and reach a wide audience.

So it’s possible to promote your music on Tik Tok! Here’s some advice from the Red Label Agency team on how to use Tik Tok effectively to promote your music.

What is Tik Tok's interest in music promotion?

When it comes to music promotion, it’s important to consider all the tools available to you. Tik Tok is one of the most popular platforms with young people, so it can be an excellent way of promoting your music to a wide audience. But how can Tik Tok be used effectively for music promotion?

Tik Tok lets you create short videos, and it’s precisely this aspect that makes it an interesting tool for music promotion. The videos you create or that other users share can be accompanied by your music, which is ideal for promoting your work.

When it comes to using music more specifically, your main aim will be to create a buzz with your sounds, or at any rate to ride the wave or even create a trend.

It is above all the use that Internet users make of your music that will determine whether or not you make a breakthrough on the social network.

As you will have realised, beyond the distribution of your music, it is exclusively the hijacking and appropriation of your music by users that will enable you to raise your profile and get your music career off the ground.

To use Tik Tok effectively for your music promotion, it’s important to have a well-honed strategy, because you may hit the jackpot, but it’s also very complicated to stand out given the amount of videos and music being released all the time. In short, good quality music is not enough to make it big on Tik Tok.

How do you add your sounds to the music platform?

It’s important to remember that TikTok isn’t just a platform for funny, viral videos. It’s also an excellent opportunity for independent musical artists to make themselves known. If you’re a musician or songwriter, you can use TikTok to promote your music and win new fans.

In fact, you have two options for putting your music online.

You can either sing or play music live to distribute your music in an “authentic” way. On the other hand, users cannot play the music again;
Or you can enter your music directly into the Tik Tok database, which will then be accessible to all users. But to do this, you need to go through specialist distributors. This second point is more complex, because it doesn’t just depend on you.

You can also use TikTok to create promotional videos for your music. To do this, you can use TikTok’s editing tool to create short, attractive videos. You can also add special effects to your videos to make them even more interesting.

As you will have realised, it’s quite complicated to proceed other than through an intermediary.

Another point to remember: you must clear the copyright on your music to be able to share it freely on Tik Tok (otherwise, Internet users will not always have the legal right to re-use it). If this is not one of your priorities, you will quickly limit the delivery of your music to your audience.

Promoting your sounds on Tik Tok: 5 practical examples

Wejdene, Bosh, Roddy Ricch and Kaiba are just some of the artists who have already made a name for themselves thanks to Tik Tok.

Wejdene, Bosh, Roddy Ricch et Kaiba sont quelques-uns des artistes qui se sont déjà fait un nom grâce à Tik Tok.

If you want to promote your music on Tik Tok, it’s important to follow a few rules to maximise your chances of success.

On Tik Tok, sharing is the main way to promote your music. You need to let users use your sounds and make them their own to share their own content. This is how your music will go viral.

That’s how your music will go viral. Perhaps Internet users will use it for a trend or choreography that you won’t like.

It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter!

The problem is quite different, and it’s called the algorithm.

Tik Tok has one of the algorithms that is most likely to highlight small content creators, or ‘fresh’ content, which is a boon if you’re new to the platform.

However, this quest for freshness may not be enough to get you discovered: you also need to be a regular on the platform. So don’t hesitate to re-launch your trend several times in different formats if it doesn’t break through the first time. What’s more, a Tik Tok video that doesn’t work in the first few days can go viral some time later, which is rare enough on a social network to be worth mentioning.

In fact, there are several possible strategies for showcasing your music. Note that this doesn’t mean you’re going to break through: there’s an element of randomness in the buzz that’s not negligible.

There are a number of ways to promote your music on Tik Tok, including the following strategies.

Challenges

Launching a Tik Tok Challenge can be a great way to promote your music. However, the chances of success are very slim, as many artists have already tried to launch challenges but failed.

Whatever the challenge you want to launch, the aim is to showcase your music. This way, when other users follow your trend, they’ll re-use your music to stay in the same theme and respect the rules of the challenge.

So don’t hesitate to mobilise your friends, family and contacts to follow the challenge and create a trend, as explained above.

It’s a good way of promoting your music, but that doesn’t mean that it will go viral and that users will check out your other sounds.

Even if it’s a good way of showcasing your music, it doesn’t mean that your musical career will take off through a successful challenge.

Choreography

As part of the challenge, you can also create a choreography based on your own music. However, note that your music must lend itself to a specific choreography, which is not always the case depending on your style of music or the specific sound you want to highlight.

Your piece of music may be very good, but it may not be enough to start a trend.

If you feel that one or more of your tunes are perfect for choreography, you can try to start a trend there.

Try to get other users to follow the choreography.

As with the challenges, your music must be adapted to the situation and to the trend you are trying to start.

If your music corresponds to a very specific style, or is aimed at a niche audience, that doesn’t mean it won’t take off!

The best way to find out if you can succeed in breaking through and getting your music known thanks to Tik Tok is to try out the various methods suggested here.

Lipsync

Lipsync or lips synchronisation is actually playback. This is another way of mobilising users around your music: you give a live performance of your music and encourage other users who like to sing (in particular) to follow your example and cover your sounds.

There is a limit to this method, however: it is very rare for users to pick up your music on their own. This strategy works very well on well-known music or music that is already in vogue, but much less so on sounds that nobody knows or that have not yet been noticed.

Link your melody to a "Life Moment".

A slightly more specific strategy: you can share “life moments” and link your music to them.

It’s more interesting when you have music that matches a particular mood or emotion. For example, you can use your music to highlight the little things we do on a daily basis, with music that’s a bit relaxing or chill, or even music that’s more authentic or more intimate, like for a wedding.

In fact, you need to understand at this stage that the best way to promote your music on Tik Tok is to ensure that it ‘sticks’ to a particular trend or type of video.

Use the Duet function with partners / other musicians or influencers

To encourage other creators to pick up your music, you can use the Duo function on Tik Tok, which allows you to make a response video to another user’s video.

In the case of musicians, you can, for example, cover the music for a specific type of video (song, cover version…), then encourage them to do the same for one of your videos, which will showcase your music…

This is a great feature if you want to promote yourself as a singer rather than promoting your music directly.

You can, for example, cover music by well-known artists or those who are trending on Tik Tok. This will then help to increase your number of subscribers and views, and you may even want to create lipsync videos to encourage your new audience to discover your music.

Building audience loyalty: don't stop at just one application!

Here are a few tips on how to use Tik Tok effectively to promote your music:

Create a short video showcasing your music. Make sure your video is funny, memorable or simply interesting. Your video should make people want to share your music with their friends.
Use the right keywords when you publish your video. Keywords (hashtags) can help you reach a wider audience. Choose relevant keywords that describe your video and music.
Interact with your audience. Reply to the comments and messages you receive. Show that you appreciate your fans’ comments and suggestions, and give them importance.
Share your music on other social networks. Use Tik Tok’s built-in sharing buttons to easily share your music on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. This will enable your music to be seen by a wider audience.
Collaborate with other artists. Collaborations are a great way to promote your music on Tik Tok. Collaborations can also help you win new fans and increase your visibility on the app.

As you can see, there are many strategies for promoting your music on Tik Tok. Unfortunately, it’s not the best way to make a name for yourself because it’s so difficult to break through.

To retain your audience and increase your number of visitors, don’t hesitate to use other interesting channels (in particular your social networks and potentially your website).

It’s through the complementary nature of all your communication channels that you’ll be able to reach a wide audience and make a name for yourself!

Tik Tok: Advantages, disadvantages and reliability for making a name for yourself as an artist

In addition to the application’s ability to create an easily reproducible trend, and the platform’s high deliverability (since tik toks generally last a few seconds), Tik Tok has the advantage of offering artists the chance to make a name for themselves. In the case of a trend, exposing users to your music several times is a powerful way of raising your profile. The main objective is therefore to multiply the number of views on the platform and encourage Internet users to reproduce your trend in order to reach a tenfold audience.

However, TikTok does have some drawbacks. The platform does not always offer the best conditions for artists to earn money from advertising on the application. On top of that, the application is highly competitive and the rate of engagement and attention from your users and your audience is very low, unlike most other networks.

Despite its drawbacks, TikTok remains an ideal platform for artists wishing to make themselves known to a wide audience. Its main objective in promoting your music is to create a buzz so that you can quickly become a household name, but this objective is very difficult to achieve.

Unfortunately, Tik Tok is not the most interesting or reliable way of promoting your music.

Artists just starting out are better off investing in more durable and reliable solutions than simply banking everything on musical buzz.

In particular, you can promote your music on YouTube, where most of your target audience is located.

You can also list your music on online music platforms such as Spotify or Deezer, so that people can easily find your music.

Would you like to find out more about the best way to promote your music and raise your profile?

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Finally, Tik Tok can be an interesting addition to the levers you are currently using, but it is very complicated to promote your music effectively without having the chance to create a buzz.

On top of that, it may not be enough to get your career off the ground.

It is therefore advisable to use the application, but not to bet all your chances on this platform in particular, even more so when your target audience is not young.

FAQ - Promoting your music on tik tok

How can I add hashtags to my video?

To add hashtags to your video, simply go to the screen where you can add hashtags. You can then enter the hashtags you want to add to your video. It’s important to choose relevant terms so that your video is seen by as many people as possible, without being misleading in the hashtags you choose.

How can I share my video on other social networks?

To share your video on other social networks, simply press the three dots icon at the bottom right of the screen. You can then choose the social network on which you want to share your video from the many options available. Tik Tok makes it easy to share your videos on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.

How do I know if my video is popular?

To find out how popular your video is, simply look at the number of likes and comments it has received.

As with other social networks, we strongly recommend that you consult your Analytics data and statistics to get a better idea of the impact of your videos and music on the social network.

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