Sound On: how TikTok became the world’s radio station

What was the 'Sound' of your 2020? For me, it was when Andrew Lloyd Webber joined TikTok. He made one of my personal favourite videos of the year: he took the acapella of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's ‘WAP’ and replayed it with the tune of ‘Phantom of the Opera’. It’s only 10 seconds long, but it’s the best song of the year that never happened.

Lloyd Webber is just one of many in the music business who have discovered the joys of the Sound: the seconds-long pop loop that TikTok has popularised, which now marks a genuine step forward for recorded music and for fans.  

While Lloyd Webber’s Sound didn’t quite make it to an official release, hundreds of other hits which many of you will have danced along to by Drake, The Weeknd and Doja Cat - all first found popularity via TikTok’s creators.  

And who would have thought we would all have started 2021 in the UK imagining ourselves crashing through the waves, pirates of our own ships, belting out sea shanties? All thanks to a TikToker called Nathan Evans, above, who first posted a video of himself singing an old sea shanty back in July 2020 and which became a global viral sensation this week.  

Nathan has now quit his day job and signed a record deal off the back of his 60 second loop.

The Sounds of TikTok represents a new evolution in the history of music, by supporting music discovery and opening up an entirely new way for music lovers to discover new tunes, and for music makers to reach new audiences.  

Open up TikTok and you can find yourself entertained by things and people you just weren't expecting. It could be a girl in Hawaii who somehow came across a diss track from the Blackpool grime scene, or an Idaho potato packer on his skateboard to work, creating a video to an old soft rock song.

These both really happened; as Bella Poarch’s creation of “M To The B” by the Blackpudlian rapper Millie B, above,  has been viewed over half a billion times, while the video Nathan Apodaca made of himself while listening to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” and drinking Ocean Spray as he cruised down the street on his longboard, below, has been viewed almost 70m times.

In the latter's case, TikTok’s jukebox of joy spawned countless remixes including versions from Mick Fleetwood and Ocean Spray’s own CEO, Tom Hayes, who jumped on the bandwagon – or rather their skateboards – to keep the pages of this particular story turning.  

Music is an inherent part of TikTok, and as TikTok's European Head of Creative Lab, my job is to help brands understand how our community use Sound to create these cultural moments and help them to thrive in this amazing full-screen, sound on environment in a way that genuinely cuts through with our community.

However, we didn't prepare for Nathan Apodaca's - or @doggface208 to his TikTok followers - Ocean Spray video, arguably the best accidental advert ever.  

Doggface himself became an overnight star, brand love for Ocean Spray surged on TikTok and off the platform into retail as it became the must-drink beverage of the moment, while Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” topped the Billboard and iTunes charts again for the first time in 43 years.  

This simple video flipped the brand story script, and with help from Fleetwood Mac and the global TikTok community the world gulped down the story, along with gallons of Ocean Spray Cran-Raspberry juice. However, there’s an art to making dreams between music and brands.  

It’s been said that music makes up 50 per cent of any commercial brand message and the right song selection can make immeasurable percentage gains in terms of ingraining recall. Music has the ability to to take the listener to a different time and place, and transport them from their sofa or smartphone and put them in the heart of the brand story.  

Consider Leftfield’s “Phat Planet” track which, with its thumping metronomic heartbeat, teleported viewers of the Guinness Surfer ad into the moment of salty, crashing seas. This story of waiting for perfection was clear, and the volume of tension was dialled up by the building soundwaves of the track, resulting in an unstoppable wave of accolades and sales.  

“Phat Planet” and the story of the sea-hardened surfers are now forever linked but it apparently took a trawl through over 2,000 songs before the creators stumbled on this unreleased track, something which is now possible far more quickly on TikTok.  

The same can be said of the Levi’s hit factory of memorable advert soundtracks. Each one took the viewer to a time or place, linking them to the moment and to the make and model of jeans.  

Some of these tracks were by previously unheard-of artists, such as “Spaceman” by one-hit wonders Babylon Zoo, while others looked to bring forgotten classics to new ears.  

In 1985, Nick Kamen’s impromptu laundrette striptease to Marvin Gaye’s, “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”, took viewers out of their mundane suburban slumber to a moment of effortlessly cool Americana. It set heart rates soaring to levels matched only by the 800 per cent rise in sales of Levi’s 501s.  

“Music is a powerful force in communication and should never be underestimated,” said Sir John Hegarty, the advertising executive who was responsible for that Nick Kamen advert. “It connects on a deep emotional level, creating a lasting bond between the communicator and the listener, adding value and memorability to your message.”  

This new chapter in the brand storybook really connected with the cultural consciousness in late 2020 with Doggface's original TikTok, sharing his personal story and setting it to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams”.  

The combination obviously clicked: the right time, the right product, and the right song. The elements came together, much like the perfectly constructed brand stories from agencies that have preceded it, elevating to a new level of narrative what was, on the surface, just a guy living his very best life and enjoying his favourite drink and classic song.  

This TikTok took us to that feeling of freedom when we escape the woes of the world, the product and lyrics combining to enable a micro-moment of joy.  

Proof if it were needed that music and storytelling have always been and still are at the heart and soul of creating a moment that moves people and moves products off the shelf – often faster than you can skateboard down a street singing, “It’s only right that you should play the way you feel it…..”