TikTok is always evolving, and one of the biggest complaints about the platform is that self-promotion often falls flat. When you make self-promotional posts on TikTok, they tend to flop more often than when television networks air another terrible show where adults complain about not understanding pronouns. These damn kids with their TikToks!
Over the last six months, I’ve noticed a change as users have learned to make self-promotional TikToks more intriguing. For example, you see videos of people lip-syncing into the camera? Those are working well. Many unknown DIY artists post videos of themselves doing this in various ways, 30 to 60 times, until the earworm of the song hits the people who regularly see their videos. Once the earworm is in their heads, they watch the videos repeatedly, driving up the views until they start to go viral.
Since self-promotional TikToks didn’t seem to do much initially, the next question was: what’s the purpose of all the time and money spent on a music video if it’s useless on TikTok? Since TikTok breaks so many artists, why bother with your limited budget on a music video, right? But I’ve seen how you can make music videos that build relationships with fans, get them to listen to your full song, and deepen your fan relationship while also making them work on TikTok as great content that really does numbers.
In this video, I’ll show you how to turn your music video into TikTok content that the algorithm likes. One of the weirdest things I’ve experienced when consulting with musicians is their skepticism about spending money on music videos. When you see the potential spread of TikToks, reels, and YouTube shorts, it seems weird to invest in a music video if you want to go mega-viral. However, this is shortsighted since musicians who have viral TikToks or reels often complain that it doesn’t translate to streams. What they really want are streams. A music video actually generates streams of a song, yet they’re thinking about neglecting that.
I recall everyone panicking when major labels dropped their favorite artists for not hitting numbers. You say the artist is everything to you, but they’re dropped because they’re not getting numbers, and you’re concerned about those numbers. Funny how that works, isn’t it?
Another complaint musicians have is that when one song blows up on a playlist or TikTok, no one forms relationships with them. The number one relationship builder with an artist is a music video, yet they keep thinking about cutting that from their budget. No one ever said musicians had logic unless it’s installed on their Mac. Thanks, everyone, I’ll be here all week.
Why not think of a strategy that tries both short-form views on TikTok and builds relationships? There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Wait, why are we skinning a cat? I love cats. (Aww) And I definitely don’t want to see any more people wearing leopard prints. I grew up in New Jersey and saw enough of that as a youth.
Anyway, this issue isn’t black and white or an either-or situation. Instead of asking how to film a music video that can be turned into numerous TikToks that do well in the algorithm while making a music video fans will love and watch repeatedly to build a relationship, you can do it all in one. And my friends, I’m going to show you how Caroline Polachek did just that.
If you’re not familiar, Caroline is one of the most innovative artists of our time. Really ahead of the curve and frankly can sing better than 99.9% of the planet without being the least bit American Idol show-off cringe stuff. While she’s been on a major label in the past, she’s technically a DIY artist who owns her own label now. She’s also familiar with TikToks going viral since her song and dance for “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings” turned into a trend on TikTok and spread the song massively.
I’ve seen this technique done a little bit, but it really hit home when I saw her do it. Then I was listening to her appearance on my favorite podcast, “How Long Gone,” and she gave up the game a bit, and it all made sense. Let’s listen.
Caroline Polachek: The “Welcome to My Island” video, for example, had 18 scenes, and the idea was that each one of those scenes could get posted individually as their own reels or TikToks or Twitter posts without compromising the integrity of the video at all. Because there is no narrative, the sequence is of no significance, and the chaos of the jumble is the whole point. So no matter how you consume it, you’re getting a point. Each one of these scenes in one shot. So technically, the edit was very simple.
Jesse: So what does she mean by this? If you watch the video for her banger and one of my favorite songs of 2023, “Welcome to My Island,” you can see it’s exactly as she describes. 18 scenarios where it seems like she filmed them through the entirety of the song and then shows which part of the video to use for each scenario. If you check her TikTok, you can see she did exactly as she said and posted them there, with many of them doing numbers and promoting the song. All she needed to do was chop them down so they’d loop well for TikTok.
This is important since I would argue that the relationships a fan makes with a video and the repeated listens make it way more valuable to invest your money. But like I said, this isn’t an either-or situation. If you think of the video properly, you can have no compromises in your video and, if anything, make it more focused and turn it into short-form videos in minutes by thinking about how you frame someone in it so it converts to 16 by 9 and how you’re going to make it so that these scenarios can be used in short form as well. Remember, no one who’s smart’s goal is to just keep users on TikTok. It’s to get them to build relationships with you. And music videos are how you do that best.
If you show all these people who are bored enough to sit through hours of Biden, Trump, and Obama gaming, surely seeing that a song they like has a music video is often a better alternative because these are getting old fast. Now, let’s be honest here. Some of you who actually have functioning brains might think, “Jesse, if videos where people just sing in their bedroom are working for getting viral TikToks, I’m just sticking to that.” That brings me to another lesson we have seen time and time again.
If you’re familiar with the concept of divergent streams, this is what a divergent stream looks like. Essentially, it’s a theory I often talk about where each side goes further and further away from each other as time goes on, and the middle becomes increasingly irrelevant and something no one consumes or pays attention to. For example, in the 2000s, you had N’Sync’s song “Pop” along with Shania Twain’s most maximalist overproductions in music history. Seriously, listen, these productions are way more overproduced than anything on the radio today. On the other side, you had The Strokes and The White Stripes achieving massive success with records that were barely produced at all and as raw as could be. This exists even today.
This is exactly why you see the popularity of a bedroom pop song like Steve Lacy’s “Bad Habit” exist at the same time as Bad Bunny’s hit (well, my gringo ass isn’t attempting to pronounce that song title). The way this relates to your videos and TikTok is you’re able to do both with the music video. You can take advantage of the high-production music video scenes you shoot and still do some lo-fi stuff, like shooting yourself on your phone singing in your backyard. This allows you to take advantage of two things audiences love: both the lo-fi and the high-fi. The raw, honest vibes of you and your camera in a relatable backyard scenario, and the spectacle of a great shot in your music video that has one hell of a vibe, help to show your range to people and see that you’re an artist worth paying attention to.
The fact is, what works on TikTok right now is a variety of promotions, not just throwing content at the wall, but instead making content that has a lot of movement and is intriguing. Both raw and polished can be intriguing. Like I was saying before, many TikTokers are doing 30 to 60 TikToks of the same song before it blows up, just pushing it until it goes viral. So for your next video, take the simple philosophy that’s been done for videos for the past 50 years, where you perform the song in various scenarios all the way through. You can then take from each scenario you filmed, the part of the song that has the hook, crop it to work in a 16 by 9 portrait frame, and you’ve got yourself short-form TikToks you can repurpose to help drive views to your songs and streams. With that music video, you now have some of that higher quality content that can build relationships. If you pepper that with low-effort content like lip-syncs, you’re on your way to having a ton of content to promote each song with.
Some of you may have noticed that Caroline doesn’t do exactly what I say. She plays different parts of the song in her TikToks, not just the hook. From what I’ve observed recently on TikTok, the real key for many unknown artists who go from zero monthly listeners on Spotify to hundreds of thousands is repeating the hook. We have to remember Caroline is pretty established. She’s been around for a minute and has a preexisting fan base. She has to play by different rules than you. While you can learn from her, I think what I’ve really learned from all the underground artists who are breaking with this technique is they’re repeating the same hook of their song over and over in the videos. They choose one part of it, and that’s every video, over and over again. I would encourage you to get the color-corrected versions of each scene in your video where you sing the hook, and then make your shorts for TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram from those because that takes minutes. If you have 18 scenarios in your video like Caroline, that’s only 12 different times you need to lip-sync your song in the shower or twerk on top of your grandfather’s head.
If you want to take this even further, I’ve seen some artists sing their future singles in video scenarios for future content and then use that later. Remember, our goal with TikToks is to be in scenarios where people will watch to the end because they’re intrigued by what they’re watching. If you have a good scene, it doesn’t go stale fast, and you can use it for a couple of songs. Another great trick I talk about all the time is that whenever you’re filming a video, half the battle is getting the lighting and setting the scene. Once that’s done, film a few costume changes in that scene and get various songs in those different costumes if it works well. This gives you tons more content to pick from. Oh yeah, when I say costumes, don’t get intimidated, you slobs. Sometimes I mean just changing your dirty jeans and maybe changing your shirt. I know that’s a lot to ask from somebody.
A lot of you may still feel like you don’t have the budget to do any of this, but honestly, I see artists every day making amazing videos with just a recent generation phone, a $200-ish light with some diffusion that can create a lot of light in a room, and a $100 gem from Aperture called an MC that can do light in any color. That’s all they need to make videos that get tons of views and look really good. So don’t count yourself out if your budget sucks. A little color correction tutorial after you’ve filmed some stuff, and you’re there.
Now that you’ve learned how to make your music video go viral on TikTok, I bet you’d like to know how to make the best music video possible. Well, you’re in luck because I made a video on that, which is on the screen now or in the description. You should really learn from it since it will help give you another piece of this puzzle. Thanks for watching.
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