Older Swedish songs have been given new life on Tiktok, according to the copyright organization STIM. The nineties hit "Lovefool" by The Cardigans is one of these:
"It's very abstract, but also a lot of fun. I have a child who is in the tiktok world so it is through him and his friends I get news about when this happens, says Nina Persson in The Cardigans to SVT and asks his child if he thinks they have gained new fans thanks to Tiktok:
"Absolutely," he says.
Unique to Tiktok
Roxette's "Listen to your heart", Wannadie's "You and me song" and Rednex's "Cotton Eye Joe" have made the same journey.
– Unlike the more conventional streaming services, Tiktok stands out, older well-known songs bring in the most compensation, says Robert Gehring, head of members at STIM, to SVT and adds:
"If you keep your rights, you make money on it over time.
In 2022, STIM got an agreement with Tiktok on compensation, now they are catching up with the payment. The period paid now is the second half of 2020.
What do these older famous songs have in common?
"Something in the text that is easy to visualize in short, quick clips," says Robert Gehring.
Nina Person, Nina Person, believes that "Lovefool's" success on the platform is due to the fact that it is "simple and direct":
"You don't even need to have any linguistic knowledge to understand what it's about. It also works well to cut short snippets out of.
Speeded-up version
The Cardigan's song "Step on me" has also gotten spin on Tiktok, especially in the speeded-up version. The record company noticed the trend and wanted to release the faster version officially, so that the money once again ends up with the band.
"We simply approved a speeded-up version, and that sounds strange," says Nina Persson.
But she doesn't see the fact that the songs have taken on a life of their own as a problem:
"It would be if they were brought into contexts where it really wasn't intended to land, with a certain type of values or commercialism. But that hasn't happened yet.