TikTok's Impact on the Official Charts
I only discovered recently that it’s not normal to constantly have songs playing in your head. Apparently, it’s unusual that I have music stuck in my head every minute of the day from when I wake to when I go to sleep.
Recently I have often woken up with snippets of TikTok songs in my head and it has started to get a little annoying. But this article isn’t meant to be a commentary on my constant ear-worm. It just seemed like an interesting reflection on what huge impact TikTok has on today’s society.
TikTok has its roots in music. Chinese owner ByteDance acquired the app musical.ly in 2017, migrating its 100 million monthly users to TikTok. Two years ago, ByteDance was reported to be the world’s most valuable start-up, and its popularity has massively grown during lockdown.
We don’t know exactly how many users TikTok has but according to the most recent figure released by ByteDance (in 2018), it was 500 million. In April this year, Sensor Tower reported that the app has been downloaded more than two million times.
Content on the app varies hugely. Lip syncing videos are popular, often using ‘trending sounds’. This might be the snippet of a song, a soundbite from popular culture, or a sound someone has created specifically for their video, which then gets picked up by others. The majority of videos have music in them whether they involve lip syncing or not. It might be a dance video, a funny video, or music providing the background for someone talking to the camera about a piece of advice, a story that happened to them, something they want to teach others, or just a statement they’d like to make. Videos last a minimum of 15 seconds and a maximum of one minute.
TikTok tells creators what the current ‘trending sounds’ are, and these often begin as viral videos that others then copy. A popular one at the moment is Tom Rosenthal’s cover of ‘Home’, which he actually released back in 2015. Creators (for those not familiar with social media lingo, this means anyone that makes videos) use this song with a slideshow of photos from a relationship or friendship showing them “growing up together”. Despite him recording it five years ago, Tom Rosenthal didn’t actually release his cover officially until October this year. It soon topped Spotify’s global viral charts and at the time of writing has nearly 6 million streams.
Spotify and YouTube both have TikTok charts, showing the current ‘trending songs’ for people to stream. Videos on TikTok last a maximum of 60 seconds, so the Spotify playlists make it easy for users to find and listen to the full songs that they’ve heard snippets of over and over again. Lots of users say they’ve found loads of great music this way - and we can see the impact this has had on the charts.
While the ‘older generation’ (she says carefully) might not recognise some of the popular tracks used on TikTok, or the dance trends they come with, there is one song almost every generation will know that’s found itself back in the charts.
Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dreams’ was originally released in 1977 on their ‘Rumours’ album. In September 2020, TikToker Nathan Apodaca (username 420doggface208) used the track in a lip-syncing video that went viral. It’s been streamed more than 71.6 million times. The video, in which he calmly skateboards down a road drinking cranberry juice, led to ‘Dreams’ returning to the US Top 40. Mick Fleetwood himself even joined TikTok to recreate the video himself.
‘Dreams’ has been used in over 572.2k videos, with many users recreating the soothing atmosphere of Nathan Apodaca’s original TikTok, skateboarding or rollerblading along. And it’s not just the charts that his video impacted. Ocean Spray, the brand of cranberry juice he was drinking, gifted him a truck full of cans to keep him thirst-quenched for two years. The 37 year old was skateboarding to work that day because his truck had broken down, so Ocean Spray decided to gift him with something they knew he needed. Nathan continues to make new videos, including one of him sipping Ocean Spray in his new cranberry coloured truck.
This month a new dance trend has seen Spotify streams soar for Frances Forever’s track ‘Space Girl’, originally released back in March 2020. People learn the dance and copy it to a short section of her song. It’s been used in 15.6k videos, most of which in the last few weeks. Popularity for the song doesn’t end with TikTok, and the trend has seen Spotify streams reach to almost 656k. Frances Forever uploaded a video this month saying she was absolutely overwhelmed by the attention the song has had and expressed her gratitude for being able to pursue a career in music.
There are many more examples of TikTok songs impacting the charts and becoming extremely popular on Spotify - some that have been around for years, and others that TikTok has helped to launch. Lockdown boredom got the better of many of us this year and participating in these viral trends not only gave millions of people something to do, but it’s somewhat a serotonin boost when one is needed. In a world connected by social media, everyone dancing to the same song has a certain pull, and it’s easy to see how the popular songs have resonated with people and affected the charts.
Written by Hannah Lindup
I’m a 25 year old marketing and communications professional living in beautiful York. Writing is one of my favourite parts of this field and I’m starting to explore more of it outside of work with the hopes of becoming a freelance writer.
Outside of work I’m also a photographer specialising in black and white street prints which I sell at art fairs and galleries (when they’re open!). I also enjoy art, politics, singing and music, having learnt five different instruments as a child.