As TikTok continues to face the potential impact of the US’s “divest-or-ban” law aimed at the app, the platform is ramping up its efforts to highlight its importance to the music industry.
In December, as part of its Year-End Music Report for 2024, TikTok reported that 13 of the 16 tracks that reached No. 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 last year were in some way linked to a trend on TikTok.
Now, the platform has released its second annual Music Impact Report, carried out in conjunction with market monitor Luminate. The report shows in detail just how intertwined TikTok has become with the commercial success of music. You can read it in full here.
The standout statistic: 84% of the songs that reached Billboard’s Global 200 last year went viral first on TikTok. Another 12% went viral on TikTok after hitting the Global 200 chart, and only 4% of tracks on the chart didn’t experience a viral moment on TikTok.
One notable caveat: For its comparisons of TikTok virality and the Global 200, the report didn’t track the entirety of 2024. The analysis looked at the period from December 29, 2023, to September 26, 2024 (weeks 1 through 39 of the chart year).
The Billboard Global 200 ranks the world’s most popular songs based on streaming and sales activity. The chart is based on data from over 200 territories worldwide.
Commenting on the results of the report, published on Thursday (February 13), TikTok’s Global Head of Music Development Ole Obermann, said: “TikTok’s role as a driver of music discovery and artist success is already well known.
“However, Luminate’s report goes even further in laying out the many ways in which TikTok and its community of highly-engaged and high-spending music fans are proven to drive incremental revenues, chart success, and added value to artists and the music industry.”
Obermann noted that TikTok’s Add to Music App – a feature the platform rolled out last year – has already had “well over” 1 billion saves.
The feature enables TikTok users to save a song they found on the platform to a playlist on a music streaming service, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Spotify.
“An artist can expect an average… 11% increase in on-demand music streaming over the course of the three days following a peak in TikTok total views,” the Music Impact Report for 2024 stated. “TikTok total views are significantly related to streaming volumes for 96% of artists in this analysis.”
In terms of impact on streaming, the report also found that US TikTok users are 68% more likely to have a paid music streaming subscription than the US population overall.
“In fact, almost two-thirds of music listeners on TikTok are paying users of at least one music streaming service,” the report said.
A haven for superfans
The report highlighted the engagement of music “superfans” on TikTok – though it defined a “superfan” somewhat differently from how music companies and analysts define it.
While typically superfans would be defined by how much money they spend on music, TikTok’s report defines them as “those who engage with music artists in at least five or more unique ways”.
By that definition, “US TikTok users are nearly twice as likely to be music super fans: 27% of all US TikTok users are music super fans versus just 15% within the US general population,” the report said.
But even if one were to look at superfans in terms of spending, the report indicates that TikTok is a major draw for this segment of music listeners.
“US TikTok users spend 46% more money on music each month than the average US music listener,” the report said. “In addition to paying for music streaming subscriptions, almost one-third of US TikTok users have purchased music in physical formats such as CDs or vinyl in the past year.”
The report added that TikTok users in the US spend 10% more on physical music than the average US listener. The report also found a correlation to live music, with US TikTok users spending 52% more on live music events and 62% more on artist merch than average.
The report offers up some case studies on specific artists, singling out Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter as two artists who it says benefitted significantly from TikTok virality in 2024.
TikTok’s report also includes a chart comparing views on its platform with on-demand streams of 1990s rock band Korn, showing a clear correlation, with TikTok views leading on-demand streams. You can see that chart below:
“TikTok engaged the Luminate Insights team to better understand the impact of TikTok fan engagement on the larger music ecosystem,” explained Nick Lanzafame, VP, Head of Research at Luminate.
“In analyzing both TikTok’s proprietary fan data and Luminate’s global music data, the resulting report provides a comprehensive and robust look at TikTok’s role within the broader music ecosystem, including its effect on music discovery, its relationship to artist performance and the contributions of its unique users to the music industry.”
The report tracked 677 artists with at least 5 million streams in Q3 2024 (in order to include artists who may have started the year with a low stream count).
On-demand streams were measured globally, with the exception of China, Cuba, India, North Korea, and Syria.
It excluded artists whose primary focus is on genres “that are not a main focus for TikTok,” those being Bollywood, children’s music, Christian, classical, gospel, jazz, NEARS (noise, nature, effects, ambient, relaxation, sound), New Age, original TV/film, religious, soundtrack, spoken & audio, and stage musicals.
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