TikTok has commissioned research firm Luminate for a new report analysing its impact on music. The report concludes that TikTok is no use to the music industry at all and that musicians should probably ignore it.
Only joking! Of course the conclusion is that TikTok is a marvellous and brilliant thing for music. But as ever with this kind of study, the fact that it has been commissioned for that purpose doesn’t mean the findings aren’t of interest.
In this case, those findings include the claim that TikTok users are “significantly more likely” to use a paid music streaming service than the average consumer, and that they spend “significantly more money” on music products (for example merch and tickets) than the average listener.
While this isn’t quantified globally, the report does provide US stats. There, 62% of TikTok users pay for a streaming service compared to 43% of consumers overall.
Meanwhile, 38% of TikTok’s American users attended a live music event and 45% bought artist merch in the last year, compared to 33% and 35% respectively for overall music listeners.
Luminate’s study also claims that “when compared to the average user of social or short-form video (SFV) platforms, TikTok users are more likely to discover new music on those types of platforms”.
In other words, music discovery is bigger on TikTok than on YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and other similar services. Again, how much more likely isn’t quantified globally, but the report claims it’s 70% more likely in the US, 92% in the UK and 96% in Germany.
The report also claims that TikTok users “have a stronger preference for international music than the average music listener”.
That’s based on their answers to a question about whether they see ‘access to music by global artists’ as being extremely important for their choice of streaming service. 28% of TikTok’s US users said yes compared to 21% of overall listeners.
In the UK these percentages were 39% and 22% respectively. In Brazil they’re 64% and 51%, meanwhile. You can read the full report here.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools :: Cresqa
Cresqa pitches itself as “your personal content strategy assistant”.
To access this post, you…