The Musician's Guide to TikTok

TikTok will have more than 755 million users by the end of 2022. And in 2025, there will be a billion people using the platform. TikTok was built for snackable video content - what Twitter is to Facebook, TikTok is to YouTube. These short snippets of content have taken over social feeds, and music is front and center in the TikTok experience.

TikTok is home to what's trending. It rallies people behind trends and creates community along the way. And the music itself can be a major part of the trend.

So, for musicians or anyone in the music industry, it's important that you consider making TikTok part of your marketing channel strategy, and learn what you'll need to do to create content that resonates with your fans.

Build Your Community and Earn Royalties on TikTok

For musicians, TikTok is a killer platform for building a following, while also making a cut per stream. If you're in the royalty game, there are some caveats, but in terms of revenue per stream, it's one of the few social platforms that is making a concerted effort to payout royalties to musicians and artists.

Micro-Sync Royalties from TikTok

Micro-Sync Royalties are a branch of synchronization royalties in music, where video uses music overlayed, so YouTube and TikTok - but it also applies to content created by users.

As a musician, you would get a cut of mechanical and performance royalties as part of a micro-sync royalty. Which is great.

Royalties can be crazy to comprehend at times, if you want some guidance on mechanical, sync, print, and performance royalties, definitely check out the guide I wrote on all four music royalties.

TikTok Can Help You Get Discovered

I mentioned the crazy global reach of TikTok, as well as its hyperbolic growth. But since the platform is so intrinsically tied to music and trends, it's a launchpad for artists as well.

For instance, Lil Nas X and Lizzo both credit TikTok for a large portion of their early success. Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" went viral on the platform, and Lizzo's "Truth Hurts" took off in a big way as well.

And that all goes back to a song becoming part of a trend, users generating content to a specific track, and spreading the music even further.

You Need to Understand the TikTok Algorithm

The TikTok algorithm is built to make relevant content more discoverable. This concept isn't unique to TikTok either, nearly every social media platform follows similar procedures to introduce its audience to new ideas and material.

It's important to understand how the TikTok algorithm works because it's the key to getting your content in front of the right audience.

So let's peel back the onion together and figure out what you need to know about the algorithm and then we will get into ways musicians should use this new knowledge.

What is the TikTok Algorithm Exactly?

The TikTok algorithm is a series of backend variables that measures numerous factors of content, with the end goal of serving up the most relevant and personalized content to a user, to ultimately improve their experience.

More specifically, this content will appear on users' For You page, which will be unique for everyone. What's cool about it is that if you started to pick up a new hobby let's say, and you start diving into content about your new hobby, you'll start to see that type of content pop into your For You page.

How Does the TikTok Algorithm Work?

There are three major buckets for how the TikTok algorithm works. Within each bucket, there is a multitude of variables, and the exact algorithm is anyone's guess. But, some general themes are quite clear: those buckets surround viewer behaviors, details about individual content, and some general audience demographics.

These three categories should be the backbone of how musicians create content on TikTok and serve as the outline for our 12 tips in the next section.

Behavioral: How Viewers Engage With Your Content

This is all about engagement per user - what does a user like or dislike. How long do they watch a video, and do they comment, share, or react? All of these behavioral cues give TikTok an idea about how users interact with content on their app.

The more engagement, the better. If a user watches your videos to full length, that means it's engaging content. For users that have similar interests across TikTok, your content will earn some street cred and start to become more discoverable to that group.

TikTok tracks all of this data, and they use it to show users more content that they will like, and less content that they won't.

And that's why understanding the algorithm is critical for success on TikTok. Because if you can reverse engineer what TikTok wants, you can give them exactly what they are looking for.

Informational: What You Define About Your Content

If you've ever written content for your website or traveled down the musician marketing path on SEO, this is a similar concept. You need to give TikTok some information about your content so that its algorithm can do its job.

This is done by optimizing your videos with the right captions, hashtags, and descriptions. You also want to make sure you are using the correct category when uploading your content.

If you're a musician, you want to make sure you append the right hashtag to your video. All of this adds up to discoverability - and that's the name of the game here.

Audience: Basic Intel on Where Someone is and How They Get There

Some basic demographic information like location and language are used as part of the algorithm.

This makes a lot of sense when you think about it - language and location are important factors in content making sense for users. If you only speak English, even with translated captions, a post entirely in Japanese might not be valuable or engaging.

Devices and categories are also factors that define the audience.

That said, behavioral indications seem to be far more valuable when it comes to the TikTok algorithm, and that's why even in the audience tips below there is a much greater emphasis on psychographics over the demographics of audiences.

So, now you know how the algorithm works, what do you make? Keep reading, I've laid out 12 tips for musicians to win TikTok's algorithm.

Creating Content to Win TikTok's Algorithm

Using behavioral, informational, and audience as the guide, I'll show you practical tips from the musician's perspective, that can help you break through the clutter. You'll also find general best practices to incorporate in your content as well.

Behavioral

This is all about improving engagement with your fans - getting them to take some sort of action with your content, so the algorithm works in your favor.

1. The Hook - You Have 1 Second

People can be brutal - in fact, they can size you up and form an opinion about a web page visual in 500 milliseconds. That's half a second. That means you need to start with a bang on every video you create.

Right off the bat do something that stops their thumbs mid-scroll. Think about how Buzzfeed writes clickbait titles - that's the general gist to incorporate. The whole reason Buzzfeed writes the way that they do is because some general headline formulas always get people wanting to learn more.

For some ideas on hooks, check out eCompath's analysis of hooks and what the most successful TikTok videos have in common.

Because sound and music are such an important component of TikTok, your hook could be built around that and trends related to music.

2. Know Your Trends - But Keep It Authentic

TikTok is all about trends. You need to be familiar with the trends, but also put your spin on them. There's nothing worse than joining a trend just because it's popular, but is so far removed from who you are.

This is where a lot of people get it wrong - they just try to recreate what's popular without bringing anything new to the table, and that comes across as inauthentic.

Your job is to be familiar with the trends, but also find a way to make them your own and authentic to you. This can be as simple as using your original music or adding your own flavor to the challenge.

Pay particular attention to how music is trending. TikTok is just one of a few social platforms where people can search by music, and if you're able to make a cover of a trending song, that can be TikTok gold.

3. The Outro - Don't Overstay Your Welcome

So how do you close this thing out?

TikTok isn't Facebook or YouTube. It's a community built on snackable video content. Unless you're going live, you should cap the length of your videos.

According to Hootsuite, which is a well-known thought leader in social media, they recommend videos around 7-15 seconds. You just need enough time to drop your hook, then hit your point.

In my experience, and also some other sources I've read about, 13-15 seconds tends to be the sweet spot. It's also worth mentioning that it's totally fine, and actually, a smart move to have some sort of call-to-action at the end of your videos.

You'll find that if you ask people to do something, like follow, they tend to do it. I know, what a crazy concept. That's why you see YouTubers constantly stop their videos and ask for likes and subscribes.

It's just like being at a live performance and asking for tips, which you absolutely should if you're not already. If you need some coaching on how to ask for tips, no worries, I've got you covered. And these tips (pun intended) can be applied to your TikTok.

Informational

If you're familiar with how images show up on Google searches, this is a similar concept. Essentially, you write a description of an image, and it's partly used to help Google determine what that image is about.

There are a few ways that TikTok follows a similar concept, by what you write about your TikTok videos.

4. Captions: Branding, Engagement, and Wayfinding

Captions are super important for TikTok for a few reasons. The first reason is that it's a great way to include some branding for your videos. This can be as simple as including your website or social media handle in the caption.

Captions are also a simple way to engage your audience. You can ask questions, start conversations, and get people talking in the comments. Or, maybe you just write something hilarious and memorable. That could even support part of your hook.

The last reason captions are important, and why captions are within the information section of this article, is they act as a way to help TikTok understand what your content is about. You absolutely should customize them so that you can help TikTok classify your content correctly.

You can turn on captions to record exactly what you said in your video, but manual captions are the better option. It will allow you to add emphasis to what you're doing and drop your personality and style into it better. If your caption can help someone quickly understand what your video is about and if it's interesting to them, you're more likely to get views.

5. Hashtags: Just Follow the Trends

Twitter pioneered social hashtags, Instagram grew them, and TikTok has mastered them. If you want to be successful on TikTok, you have to incorporate hashtags into your content.

They immediately improve your discoverability and help you get found by the right audience. That audience, in essence, becomes a community, and if you play your cards right, you can create a community of like-minded people.

This is instrumental (pun again) for musicians and bands - if a fan loves your music, they will naturally want to be part of your community.

Trends are so important on TikTok - I've probably said that a hundred times in this article, but it's really a platform of trends. And hashtags are a barometer of trends. So when it's relevant, if you create content as part of a trend, certainly use the correct hashtag for it.

You can find that in the TikTok Discover tab, which will show you what hashtags are trending at the moment.

6. Descriptions: Be Descriptive?

You've 150 characters to work with, and it's most likely less than that because your hashtags are going to eat into that character count. So what do you say?

TikTok won't necessarily comb through your description to categorize your video (outside of hashtags), but having a clear description, with some sort of engaging element can go a long way.

And that starts with your audience, or the audience you are trying to build - what are they into? Is there some sort of language or insider talk that works best with them? Perfect, run with that. Show them that you are also in the loop and one of them.

Some people will drop the description into their actual video, but there's always a fixed position to work with. There are many ways to go about this, but here's a great resource on how to write video descriptions that help you gain some informational brownie points with TikTok.

Audience

In a nerdy research kind of way, the audience consists of demographic details, especially geography - think language and location. But it's also relative to the devices used.

I like to think those signals help build up a profile of a general user, and how that user is part of a larger segment, an audience if you will. So there are three things all musicians should know about their TikTok audience.

7. Niche Down

If you try to stand out and be everything to everyone, you're going to have a tough time succeeding on TikTok.

What I mean by that is if you want to be successful on any platform, you need to focus on one thing, or in this case, niching down.

Niche down is the concept of taking something like a genre of rock, slicing it down a little bit more, and trying to own that smaller space. That might mean you end up in a circle of less than a thousand people, but if you can build up some credit there, then you can start to expand.

This means you'll need to create content very specific to that niche, and use the hashtags related to this group while staying on top of the trends that resonate the most with this smaller audience.

8. Give and Take

There's a lot of give and take on TikTok - if you want an audience, you have to give them something first.

You can't just go out there and post content and hope people will find it, especially in the beginning. You need to be a little more proactive about it, which means you'll have to put in the work to get something back.

Think of it like performing live - you have to interact with your audience if you want a decent show. You wouldn't just stand on stage and play the hits without some sort of conversation with the crowd. Well, you at least wouldn't want to do that if you were trying to create a great show.

On TikTok, this could be anything from following people who might be interested in your content, to engaging with their content and leaving comments. It doesn't have to be a ton of work, but it is work nonetheless.

The good news is that once you start to build up an audience, the platform will do more of the work for you. But in the beginning, you must be active and engaging if you want people to stick around.

9. Be Active - And Go Live

The best way to engage with your audience is to be active on the platform. This could be anything from commenting on other people's videos to posting your content regularly. Consistency is a super important key to success here.

But one of the best ways to engage with your audience is to go live. Live streaming is a great way to connect with your fans in real-time and build up a connection.

It's also a great way to show off your personality and give people a behind-the-scenes look at your life as a musician.

You're a musician or performer after all, and hold a special talent that others don't possess. So use that to your advantage and show them in real-time how you roll.

And if you're worried about live streaming, don't be - it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be real.

Best Practices

Now that we've gone over some of the specifics that directly impact the algorithm, I think it's important to just hit some of the best practices. You know, so you avoid looking like your mom taking photos on her iPad...

10. New Accounts Get A Boost to First Videos

This is something that's completely out of your control, but it's important to know nonetheless.

TikTok gives new accounts a little bit of a boost when they first start posting videos. So if you're just starting, make sure your first few videos are high quality and super engaging.

You want to make the best possible impression, because you've got super reach, and it can help you build your following even quicker.

11. Vertical, Not Horizontal

TikTok is a vertical platform, which means you should be recording your videos in a vertical orientation.

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it's important to note nonetheless. People hold their phones vertically 95% of the time, so you want your videos to reflect that.

12. Lights, Camera, and... Steady Hands

The quality of your videos is important, but it doesn't have to be super high-end to look great.

TikTok is all about quick, raw, and unfiltered content - so don't worry about making things perfect. Just focus on having fun and being yourself.

That said, there are a few things you can do to make sure your videos look great.

First, make sure you have good lighting. Natural light is always best, but if you're indoors, try to find a well-lit room. Unless you live in a dungeon or are going live from the Catacombs, it will come off weird with dark lighting.

Second, use a tripod if you can, or something with a stabilizing capability. This will help keep your camera steady and avoid any shaking.

And That's How Musicians Should Use Tik Tok

TikTok can be a great platform for musicians - but only if you use it correctly. You only have so much time to dedicate to marketing and social media. If you're going to jump into TikTok, do it correctly so that you get the most from the experience.

The algorithm is important, but so are things like being active and engaging with your audience. If you use the tips above but focus on the fan you are trying to win over, and stay natural the whole time, you'll set yourself up for the most success.

So go out there and start posting some videos with these new tips. I want to see them too, so make sure you let us know where to find you.