DECRYPTION
"Music plays a very important role on Tik Tok", diagnoses Amélie Ebongué, specialist in social networks. Guest of Europe 1, Monday morning, the expert deciphers a Chinese social network, still unknown to certain generations, but which makes the rain and the good weather among the youngest. "It's a mobile application that allows you to share videos ranging from 15 seconds to a minute," she recalls. "And it's pretty addictive." To the point of representing hope for a music industry with a fragile economic model, heavily impacted by the coronavirus crisis?
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"Choose the most playful extract or part"
"Artists have the possibility of promoting themselves on this platform, they are creators of their own identity, their own image", explains Amélie Ebongué. What is the difference with Myspace, which was fashionable at the end of the 2000s? Tik Tok is "a social network designed on the form of 'snack content', videos that are consumed very quickly and that can be broadcast on its other networks", replies the specialist, as opposed to "a very closed platform and restricted to a number of users ".
An accessible application - it is used by eight million people in France - and which represents a considerable lever for musicians. All the more thanks to "the possibility of sequencing the parts that we want to integrate on a video", points out Amélie Ebongué. "The user has the possibility to choose the most playful extract or part", and often the most heady.
"The magic of virality has operated"
This mechanic, Mathieu Hocine, songwriter, better known as Kid Francescoli on Tik Tok, knows it well ... despite himself. At the end of last year, he noticed an increase in listening tapes on one of the songs of his label, released in 2017, Moon . "We didn't know where it came from," he said to Pascale Clark's microphone. "We quickly understood when I received this message on Instagram: 'did you see that your song had gone viral on Tik Tok?'"
In the title, "there was a key phrase, a 'drop'", explains Mathieu Hocine: a piece of the song where the phrase "And it went like" ("And it gave", in English) . "This is where the magic of the internet of virality worked. People appropriated it by using the phrase to tell their own story", laughs the musician whose words have been used by several "Tik Tokeurs "famous people and personalities, like Jenifer Lopez. Result: 700,000 videos featuring the song on the application, but also 670,000 million views for the original title.
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A new windfall for artists?
Besides these impressive figures, what concrete impact? "It was widely followed on Spotify and all streaming platforms," says the artist. "I especially wanted it to translate into a concert and this was the case for three dates at the start of the tour", unfortunately interrupted by the health context.
From now on, "the record companies compose with this new application and propose to the artists to promote their titles directly above", assures as for it Amélie Ebongué. The American example of the title Old Town Road , by Lil Nas X, whose popularity is entirely due to Tik Tok, speaks volumes. A refrain remaining in mind and a choreography in the clip, easy to resume in video "challenge": the recipe was perfect.