Home » From music to lyrics: what a song must be like to go viral on TikTok

From music to lyrics: what a song must be like to go viral on TikTok

by admin
From music to lyrics: what a song must be like to go viral on TikTok

Lithia Springs is a small town about 30km from Atlanta, Georgia. It is not one of those places that a tourist would visit: little or nothing happens to us and, in reality, not even the surroundings are so interesting. It is here in Lithia Springs that Montero Lamar Hill, an ordinary teenager born and raised in the South of the United States, tries to find a way online, locked up in his bedroom. He experiments with Twitter: he creates a Nicky Minaj fanpage, putting in place a series of tricks to increase the diffusion and virality of his contents.

Social network

How a catchphrase on TikTok is born: the story of Poor Seagull

by Francesco Marino


But in Montero it is not enough. His passion, the real one, is music. So in 2018 he records a song, Old Town Road, which he tries to spread online. He uses some traditional channels, sure, but he experiments with a social network that, just at that time, was starting to become known in the United States. Montero autonomously uploads the song to TikTok: “I wanted to make it a meme,” he later told Buzzfeed News.

It works. Old Town Road, in 2019 reaches the top of the Billboard chart. And it works so much that many of the readers of this article will know Montero by the name of Lil Nas X, the aka with which he became famous after the mass spread of the song, a country rap that actually is hard to get out of. head. It is not known where the viral push started. What is known is that, with the background of the song, a challenge, a challenge, the Yeehaw Challengewhose related hashtag has registered almost 1.5 billion views in recent years.

Social network

Understanding, before repressing: this is how TikTok responds to the challenge of dangerous challenges

by Emanuele Capone


Understanding the reasons behind the diffusion of any online content is a challenge that has fascinated sociologists and scholars since the beginning of the web era. TikTok, however, has broadened the terms of the discussion. Yes, because on the social network owned by Bytedance not only the content itself becomes viral, therefore the video that a user decides to produce. Also – and above all, at times – the music, the background, becomes viral. And this has enormous effects on the music industry, on the songs that have just been released or on those that have been around for many years, as we have also told you in the recent case of the revived song of the neo-melodic Gianni Celeste.

See also  Rare diseases, orthopedic: "Thanks to joint ultrasound haemophilic therapy and early prophylaxis"

So we asked ourselves: are there any intrinsic characteristics of a song that can increase its chances of spreading, of becoming viral on TikTok? Here is our answer.

Social network

Green light for 10-minute videos: this is how TikTok hunts YouTube

by Emanuele Capone


The music

Let’s start with the genre. According to Benjamin Groff, who gives his songwriting lessons on the web, to write a hit from TikTok the first genre to look at is hip-hop, even if pop and indie work quite well as well. So far, nothing strange: it is, moreover, what the specific target that frequents the platform listens to the most. Let’s try to go a little deeper. In an article on Medium entirely dedicated to the topic, US data analytics expert Josh D. Viner analyzed the characteristics of 250 songs that went viral on TikTok. He studied the rhythm, the tonality, the dance, to try to trace the profile of the perfect song for the app owned by Bytedance.

The information that emerges from Viner’s analysis gives fairly clear indications. To have any chance of going viral on TikTok a song must be “energetic”, that is, fast and loud, danceable and with a Bpm (the number of beats per minute) greater than 100. In other words, a rhythmic track, on which it can be possible to build a ballet, one of those challenges that made the fortune of Lil Nas X and many others like him.

How, among others, It’s Trickya Run Dmc song contained in a historic record for world hip hop, that Raising Hell who had broken down the boundaries between the world of rap and that of rock. Here, that song, released as a single in 1987, has come back strongly in the last year and a half on TikTok, associated with a ballet in which users showed the choices between two alternatives.

See also  NVIDIA is crossing three valleys at the same time, and once it successfully reaches the city of heaven, it will become the most important infrastructure in the future metaverse | T Kebang

Following these first indications, the song must tend to be in a major key, which usually characterizes the most cheerful pieces. It does not have to be recorded live or acoustically: these two characteristics are not associated with the chances of going viral. Of course, there are exceptions, but they are cases that have more to do with other characteristics associated with the songs, such as the lyrics.

Social network

8 US states against TikTok: “It can harm kids”

by Emanuele Capone


The word

Here, there is not only the music. Often, on TikTok the words, the lyrics of the songs count even more. Not that songwriters abound on the platform: here the words are important in a different way than what we are used to. In an article on their blog, Haulix’s music analysts explain that there are two ways of writing that more than any other work on the platform.

The first has to do with a text that can be particularly useful in the expression of a feeling, an emotion, a particular state of mind. Those words can then be reused as lip-syncing by users, become memes, acquire a specific meaning within the platform. There is a song by Blanco, along with Mace and Salmo, which is called Our song and he speaks in a poignant way of the end, almost cinematic, of a love story: “In the rain, like the first time”, he says in the refrain. Here, the song, which contributed to the explosion of the winner of Sanremo 2022, is the perfect expression of this way of writing lyrics: a visual approach, which evokes moments that everyone can relive and share.

See also  The Army in support of Fausto Coppi: from Meteomont to the climbing gym in Piazza Galimberti and the commitment to safety in the descent of the Fauniera

Another element that works particularly well on TikTok is the use of words that give precise directions. A bit like group dances did in the 90s, on the platform those pieces work that tell who is listening to them what to do: think about Bye Bye de The list representative who, after the success in Sanremo, has depopulated on TikTok precisely for the ease of reproducing the ballet indicated in the song and proposed by Veronica Lucchesi on the stage of the Ariston.

The role of TikTok

Ok, so: is it enough to have a fast, energetic, danceable song, with a text that invites you to do something? No, that’s not quite the case. Partly because the paths of virality are unexpected by definition, partly because TikTok is a social network that, unlike others, intervenes in a fairly concrete and effective way on what happens within its own digital space.

In Foundering, a very important podcast to understand the past, present and future of the platform, Bloomberg journalist Shelly Banjo talks about the work of TikTok together with music labels, to help professionals understand which song will really make it into the social network. Banjo tells the story of Savage by Megan Thee Stallion, one of the biggest hits in the history of the platform. Well, that song, which since its release has been used in over 17 million videos on TikTok for nearly 19 billion views, was not the single chosen to promote the album. Suck.

Another song was supposed to launch the album, Captain Hook. TikTok’s own music team, however, suggested that the label test five songs on the platform to monitor the progress of the metrics before deciding which track to bet on. Here, almost immediately the users of the social network showed a clear preference for Savage. This is a circumstance that on the one hand pushed 300 Entertainment, the label of Megan Thee Stallion, to focus on this last song; on the other hand, it encouraged TikTok to suggest sound in playlists and banners within the platform.

You may also like

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Accept Read More

Privacy & Cookies Policy