{"id":804720,"date":"2020-02-28T09:49:15","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T16:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=958401"},"modified":"2020-02-28T09:49:15","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T16:49:15","slug":"surprising-no-one-tiktok-is-driving-a-lot-of-new-artist-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/surprising-no-one-tiktok-is-driving-a-lot-of-new-artist-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"Surprising No One, TikTok Is Driving a Lot of New Artist Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 2008, Jay Sean released \u201cRide It,\u201d a dancefloor come-on that became a hit everywhere \u2014 except for the U.S. Now it\u2019s enjoying a second life. A house music remix by Regard became popular on the video app TikTok<\/a>, which allows users to set short clips to music. After the \u201cRide It\u201d remix soundtracked millions of TikTok videos, Epic Records picked up the rights to the single in the U.S. and started promoting it to radio. Regard\u2019s version earned more than 4,200 spins on the pop airwaves in February, according to Mediabase, good enough to crack the Top 40. \u201c<\/span>When a hit\u2019s a hit, you can\u2019t hold it down,\u201d <\/span>Sean told<\/span><\/a> Rolling Stone<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

TikTok helped ensure that \u201cRide It\u201d resurfaced after more than a decade, and the app\u2019s influence is glaringly apparent in the <\/span>latest semi-annual report<\/span><\/a> from the music data analytics company Chartmetric, which tracks artist performance across a wide range of platforms, from well-known streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music to Wikipedia to Instagram. <\/span><\/p>\n

Chartmetric, which was founded in 2016, released its <\/span>first global music industry report<\/span><\/a> last September. At the time, the company focused on artists enjoying the most growth between January and June, 2019 \u2014 a club that included household names like Taylor Swift and Lizzo \u2014 and dissected the genre preferences of listeners on different streaming platforms. <\/span><\/p>\n

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The follow-up<\/span><\/a>, which comes out on Tuesday, aims to track the development of rising acts, rappers and singers and producers who are quickly building followings but not yet headlining arenas. And \u201cso many of those artists got big on TikTok first, whether it\u2019s Tones and I [with \u201cDance Monkey\u201d] or Regard [with \u201cRide It\u201d],\u201d says Rutger Rosenborg, Chartmetric\u2019s digital strategy lead.  <\/span><\/p>\n

This is no surprise to anyone who\u2019s been watching the music industry closely in the last year. A steady stream of singles have become popular on TikTok \u2014 early examples include Sub Urban\u2019s \u201cCradles\u201d and Flo Milli\u2019s \u201cBeef FloMix;\u201d more recently, users have been excited by Mak Sauce\u2019s \u201cGood Morning\u201d and Tokyo\u2019s Revenge\u2019s \u201cGoodMorningTokyo!\u201d \u2014 leading to fierce bidding wars from major labels. <\/span>\u201cIf you have a viral TikTok song, you can get a multi-million dollar deal,\u201d Daniel Awad, whose Good Luck Have Fun management company works with the rap-rocker Oliver Tree and the electronic producer Whethan, <\/span>said last year<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Once major labels sign an artist with a TikTok hit, they <\/span>attempt to transfer the momentum from the anarchic, rapidfire, amateur world of the app to the highly controlled, slow-rolling, big-budget world of Top 40 radio \u2014 to transmute hypermodern online popularity into old-fashioned cultural ubiquity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Artists at various stages of this process pepper Chartmetric\u2019s latest report. Thanks to the runaway success of \u201cRoxanne,\u201d Arizona Zervas enjoyed a 2,472 percent increase in Spotify monthly listeners (first among artists that had over a million monthly listeners in June 2019). Doja Cat<\/a>\u2019s \u201cSay So\u201d is in the middle of its app-to-airwaves transformation \u2014 she is Top Ten at two radio formats this week \u2014 and her Spotify listeners have increased by more than 500 percent (sixth). Trevor Daniel\u2019s \u201cFalling\u201d was originally released in October 2018 but it only took off on TikTok last year; the bump he\u2019s experienced has been big enough that Daniel is third on Chartmetric\u2019s ranking of \u201ccross-platform performance gain.\u201d Ashnikko had a TikTok hit with \u201cStupid;\u201d no rising act gained more YouTube channel views in the second half of 2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

But even though TikTok acts as a volcano constantly erupting with hit singles, it\u2019s not purely a machine for creating new stars. Chartmetric is one of the first companies to chart TikTok activity, and when the company ranked songs that saw the biggest percentage gain in video count on the app over the last six months of 2019, it found that old songs are as likely to catch on as new releases. Throwbacks like Harry Belafonte\u2019s \u201cJump in the Line\u201d and War\u2019s \u201cLow Rider\u201d were both in the Top Ten, as were Hot Chelle Rae\u2019s \u201cTonight Tonight\u201d (from 2011) and Chief Keef\u2019s \u201cFaneto\u201d (2015). <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe interesting thing with TikTok is [that] it\u2019s not always frontline stuff [that performs well on the app],\u201d says Jason Joven, manager of content and insights for Chartmetric. \u201cCatalog is pretty much toe to toe with new music when it comes to what people attach to.\u201d That means it\u2019s not easy for labels and artists to know what will work on TikTok \u2014 and when. <\/span><\/p>\n

So it\u2019s encouraging that while the app offers one potential route to a massive hit \u2014 and the follower increases that accompany it \u2014 that\u2019s not the only path for artists to grow. It\u2019s impressive that the Nigerian star Burna Boy<\/a> has earned a 681 percent increase in Spotify followers (third among up-and-comers) and 67 percent gain in Twitter followers (first) over the second half of 2019, all without one major song storming up the U.S. charts. <\/span><\/p>\n

This reflects a different approach to building a career then betting big on one hot single. Burna Boy has been crisscrossing the globe, steadily winning over fans with dynamite live shows and finding new listeners through savvy international collaborations. \u201c<\/span>One thing that\u2019s constant [in my career] is growth,\u201d Burna Boy told <\/span>Rolling Stone <\/span><\/i>in 2019<\/span><\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s not an up and down thing. I climbed every step. I don\u2019t skip steps \u2014 I\u2019m too heavy to skip steps.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Burna Boy is part of a large international contingent among the rising artists collected in Chartmetric\u2019s report. Some platforms clearly favor artists from North America over all else \u2014 only two of the Top Ten rising artists on Spotify are from outside of North America, and all the Top Ten tracks that saw big video count gains on TikTok are from the U.S. But YouTube and Instagram are more open-minded, and that\u2019s where the English group D-Block Europe and the Argentinean producer Bizarrap are making the most impact. <\/span><\/p>\n

Chartmetric\u2019s Breakthrough Artists report provides only a six-month snapshot. Readers will surely be curious if some growth paths are more sustainable than others \u2014 is this the start of a long career for Regard, who is now enjoying more than 1.5 million streams a day on Spotify alone, or will the producer endure primarily as a one-hit wonder? That\u2019s a subject for a future report. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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In 2008, Jay Sean released \u201cRide It,\u201d a dancefloor come-on that became a hit everywhere \u2014 except for the U.S. Now it\u2019s enjoying a second life. A house music remix by Regard became popular on the video app TikTok, which allows users to set short clips to music. After the \u201cRide It\u201d remix soundtracked millions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-804720","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-20 08:17:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}