In July, popular influencer/podcast host Tinx took to TikTok to ask her followers a question: “Record labels and artists ask random people to make content for music and not say[ing] is it an ad?' The answer to the more than 700 responses to the video was a resounding and simple “yes.”
“Sound campaigns” have been an integral part of music marketing since TikTok took off in 2019, but they're different from other paid social media promotion campaigns. Captioning a video with an #ad or other similar disclosure is required by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) when companies “pay or provide you with free or discounted products or services” in exchange for having their product featured in a video, but this has never been the standard for paid promotion of a song. “Any substance of perceived authenticity can be removed when a creator labels a video as paid,” says a CEO of a digital marketing company.
As a result, one major record marketer believes that “75% of popular songs on TikTok started with a creator marketing campaign,” but says there's no way to actually track how many of the songs that go viral on TikTok do so organically or are boosted by thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars paid offer.
When asked for clarification on whether promoting songs in the background of videos requires disclosure or not, an FTC spokesperson said: “While we cannot comment on any specific example, this practice seems somewhat analogous to a product placement… When there are songs that they play in the background of the videos, there are no objective claims about the songs. The creator of the video may be implying that they like the song, but viewers can judge the song for themselves when they hear it played in the video. For these reasons, it may not be necessary for a video to disclose that the content creator was compensated for the use of a particular song in the background of the video. However, we would assess each case individually.”
While it is not, in most cases, a violation of the FTC for creators to run covert campaigns to promote singles on TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts, it remains a poorly understood area of music marketing that many music fans don't know is happening. “The beauty of Tiktok, for me, has disappeared because I'm hyper-cynical and believe that everything I see there, exposed or not, is paid to be promoted,” says the CEO of the digital marketing agency. (Most of the sources for this story requested anonymity to speak freely about how these campaigns work.)
Often, digital marketing gurus will reminisce about the reigning days of the Hype House brothers and D'Amelio's TikTok around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which were considered the good ol' days for creator marketing. At the time, TikTok's successful virality was expected to translate into a boost in streams almost every time. “Back then, it made sense to pay over $10,000 a video for these famous kids to publish your song. There was a good chance [return on investment] ROI in 2020,” says a second CEO of a digital marketing company. A creator manager says they remember a top creator at the time boasting that he got “$50,000 just to play the audio” in the background of a TikTok.
Typically, these creators will be instructed by an artist manager, label, or third-party digital marketing firm (most often the latter) to perform a specific trend along with the song, such as a dance or a specific filter, in exchange for money .
But these days, experts like it George KaralexisCEO of YouTube marketing and rights management company Ten2 Media, say it's “more expensive and harder than ever to start a trend” online. As Bulletin board reported in 2022, TikTok tracks in the US were streamed significantly less that year than in 2021, according to the latest available data from Luminate.
Now, this unpredictability has led to top creators rarely commanding prices of more than $10,000 for the use of a song in a video. Instead, digital marketers spread their budgets across multiple videos from smaller creators to give the illusion of a less traceable support base. The digital marketing company's second CEO says today's payout ranges from $25 for a micro-creator (with around 10,000 followers or less) to $10,000 for a TikTok star to post the song.
Recently, a cottage industry of startups has emerged in the creator campaign space, automating the connection between smaller creators and artists who want to pay them to promote their songs. One of the leading companies, Sound.Me, for example, recently ran a campaign for creators “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” through their service. TikTok also offers a similar service with the 'Work With Artists' feature within the app, which allows qualified creators (those with over 50,000 followers and living in a certain area) to get paid to use songs such as Halseythe cover of “Lucky”, in their videos.
Even when an artist is willing to spend a significant budget on a particular creator, that doesn't mean the creator will always accept it. Audio deals are known to be less lucrative for creators than other brands like fashion or skin care, so it's common for top creators to “shoot [the artist’s team] An outrageous number, knowing a loud campaign isn't necessarily worth their time otherwise,” says the creative director.
It's also much less common to request a specific type of video from a creator today. In contrast, the second digital marketing CEO says “it's not really about pushing specific creative. It's just about finding the right creators for the artist's target audience and letting the influences run with creative freedom.”
All of this makes distinguishing paid promotion of a song from organic enthusiasm more difficult than ever. Even more complicated, the creator manager says it's a “best practice” for creators “who want to work with a particular brand to show for free that they're using the brand's products anyway to get their attention. The same applies to the songs.”
The sign of real success for these campaigns is when the song's social media usage grows well beyond the original budget, encouraging unpaid creators to jump in and use the track, multiple digital marketing sources say. “The value is in the people [using the song] that are not paid,” he says Jeremy Gruberhead of artist marketing and digital strategy at management company Friends at Work. “Success is when we have 13 types of video presented simultaneously in the song,” adds one indie marketer. “We can't even tell what's going on.”
Typically, these audio campaigns are conducted in phases and, while common, are not expected for every release, say three label marketing sources. $5,000 is the low cost for what two digital marketing agencies believe would be a fruitful campaign, but the spend can rise to $80,000 (or even six figures for rare cases) if it's a big artist and the song reacts positively. Usually after the first round of the campaign, the team will follow up and see if the song is growing. If that happens, then a next wave of spending will be unlocked and distributed to creators to fuel the flame.
Gruber believes an ethical gray area arises when artist groups offer money to music curation influencers to specifically recommend a song without disclosing the transaction to viewers. Unlike a “product placement”-like promotion that just airs in the background, these music curators use TikTok to speak to the camera, telling consumers to take action and see new songs in exchange for undisclosed money, concert tickets, or other privileges. When asked about this type of promotion specifically, the FTC declined to comment on whether or not disclosure is required.
It's also common for record labels to turn to social media-based blogs, usually in the rap genre, such as WorldStarHipHop, Rap, Our Generation Music and others that offer pay-to-play promotion on TikTok and other social media platforms for to create the appearance of organic online chat. In an exchange of messages, reviewed by Bulletin boarda rep for Rap told a music label that “solo” posts cost $1,000, but they offer discounted rates for “bulk” orders. Typically, these payments are not disclosed to consumers.
While it may come as a surprise to some music fans to learn how often these paid campaigns are used, the general consensus among the eight sources spoken to for this story is that it doesn't hurt anyone to do so—at least not in the press. campaigns that look like product placements. “Music, to me, is this beautiful art form and it's completely different from other 'products' in other industries [that run creator campaigns]”, says the first CEO of the digital marketing company. “We feel that ethically we are promoting content that is purely positive for society.”
It may not be as effective as it was a few years ago, but creator campaigns are still believed to be essential for marketing songs today, whether it's on TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts (which are increasingly common). Says the second founder of the digital marketing company: “It's still the best we've got.”
This story was published as part of of Billboard new “Engineering Education” music technology newsletter. Sign up for “Machine Learning” and of Billboard other newsletters, here.
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