Photo Credit: Nathana Rebouças
TikTok virality is the unicorn everyone on the platform is seeking—but research shows those viral moments don’t translate to sustainable streaming growth. That’s even among the tracks that have the fortune to go viral on the platform in the first place.
Duetti’s ‘Music Economics Report‘ highlights how much each streaming service is paying its artists in 2024, but it also provided a look at how TikTok impacts the music industry. The report found that even amongst the <1% of tracks that ‘go viral’ on TikTok, only ~15% experience long-term streaming growth on digital service providers (DSPs) like Spotify and Apple Music.
Photo Credit: Duetti
Virality in this instance is defined as doubling TikTok video creations using that track within one month, with a minimum of 250,000 TikTok video creations. Meanwhile, long-term streaming growth is defined as a >30% increase in average Spotify streams over the pre-viral baseline, recorded four months after the viral moment.
And while TikTok is a critical promotional tool for independent artists to reach new audiences, the payout for tracks on TikTok remains abysmal when compared to traditional DSPs. The rate it pays out per 1,000 streams (video creations for TikTok) is far below even Spotify, which is the lowest-paying DSP on the list in 2024.
TikTok’s abysmal payout rates are based on per video creation rather than per stream, but it’s easy to see why UMG was ready to put up a fight for licensing music to the platform. Of course, TikTok is eager to crow its own successes.
Luminate’s Music Impact Report highlights that 84% of songs that entered the Billboard Global 200 in 2024 went viral on TikTok first. Music super fans are almost twice as likely to use the platform and the ‘Add to Music App’ feature has generated over a billion track saves since it was introduced.