TikTok’s rewarding you for keeping the audience on the app.” “Keeping your audience focused on your video instead of swiping away - the longer they watch, the better it does. “Watch time does the best” when it comes to attracting the algorithm, asserts KevboyPerry (whose 2 million fans suggest that he knows a thing or two about the subject). TikTok satisfies this desire with its vaunted algorithm, which is constantly searching for new clips, rather than just pushing out the latest videos from already popular users.

“People want the chance to be as big as the biggest people on there.” “On Instagram, there’s zero chance another person’s gonna be Kim Kardashian,” says Jonathan Strauss, the co-founder and CEO of Create Music Group, which owns Flighthouse. This is an article of faith in the TikTok community and a sign of a dynamic app. “And if you can get famous easily, you’re gonna do it.” On Musical.ly, like Twitter or Instagram right now, it was nearly impossible for a new user to become really popular, but TikTok “allows people to get famous really easily,” according to KevboyPerry, who is often credited with starting the trend of adding written cue-cards to TikTok videos. It’s not just that TikTok’s inputs are more open-ended - the outcomes for users are, too. Case in point: The Bentist recently posted a video of himself making a retainer while the version of “Never Ending Story” from Stranger Things plays in the background it attracted over a million likes. “It gets old fast.” On TikTok, in contrast, the possibilities are wide-ranging. “How many times can you see someone lip sync?” asks TikTok user The Bentist, a practicing dentist who has amassed a million fans on the platform. That’s because the premise of TikTok is far more open-ended than that of its predecessor. And a surplus of marketing money: “Because got acquired by ByteDance, they have access to a lot more resources,” says Jacob Pace, CEO of Flighthouse, a media brand that has over 18 million fans on TikTok.īut if Musical.ly had remained the same even as it enjoyed a bigger budget, it’s unlikely it would have enjoyed this sudden growth spurt. “There’s a surplus of users after the merger,” says Doolaramani. As a result, Musical.ly effectively vaulted multiple weight-classes overnight.

The first reason for the eruption of TikTok references is that ByteDance is a corporate behemoth worth many billions of dollars TikTok claimed to already have 500 million monthly users around the globe when it swallowed Musical.ly.

But TikTok has benefitted from greater resources, an algorithm that enhances social mobility, and targeted outreach efforts that ensure popular users are up on the latest trends. “Now it’s the wood in the fire.” “If you think of the music consuming demo as 11 to 24, you reach the bottom half of that audience through two platforms: YouTube and TikTok,” adds Jeff Vaughn, senior vp of A&R at APG.īut what has allowed TikTok to become such a major player so quickly? Google Trends data suggest that even when Musical.ly was at its peak of popularity in the U.S., it was only half as sought after as TikTok. In 12 months, TikTok has become massive enough that Mike Caren, CEO of Artist Partner Group, compares it to “the short-form version of YouTube.” “It’s too big alone to be the spark for a song,” Caren says.

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