TikTok has revolutionized the cultural sector. Music, cinema, literature and art. Culture is on the platform through videos and images; with nearly 815 million users worldwide, it has become a launching pad for stars. Creators use this space to show their products and accumulate millions of views. And although it is true that TikTok has been, as if it were a store, a showcase, the truth is that the content creators themselves do not know the key to success: the network’s algorithm is indecipherable. Social media experts agree that this can be a major obstacle: “On TikTok, a lot of content is promoted mainstream (the most dominant and conventional cultural current) and cultural trends are marked,” says Fátima Martínez, a specialist in marketing and social media. But does that mean that emerging artists — and products — have no place on the web? Creators, experts and users themselves are trying to answer TikTok’s new great cultural dilemma.
Kyle Chayka, journalist for the magazine The New Yorker and author of Mundofiltro. How algorithms have flattened culture (Gatopardo Ediciones, 2024), where he analyses the impact of social media on the cultural sector, he responds by email: “I think TikTok reinforces a new type of dominant culture that feeds on emerging culture, but also denatures it. There is no doubt that it has created a form of mainstream culture, with trends and celebrities that are enormously popular on the app and then spread outside of it.” He adds: “TikTok reinforces a culture that seems new if we compare it, for example, with that of a decade ago.”
“Making content go viral on TikTok is a matter of trial and error”
Fatima Martinez, social media expert
The phenomenon of promoting content and creating stars on social media was not born with TikTok. Before that there was MySpace, YouTube, Instagram… But the particularity of the Chinese network lies, according to the dozen experts surveyed for this report, in the ease with which a video goes viral and gets millions of views in a matter of minutes. And that is what happens every week with books, singers, songs, films… Federico García Lorca has become a TikTok superstar: content about the author is viral, and there are young people and adults talking about his works. Classics such as Pride and Prejudiceby Jane Austen, and recent works such as So little life (Hanya Yanagihara’s book published in 2015 and which has now become a bestseller thanks to its rise in the app) have gone viral. All thanks to #BookTok, the literary community that has accumulated more than 30 million posts worldwide in which users of different sexes and ages make recommendations about the books they have liked the most or present their novels.
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There, every week, profiles as different as Marina Sanmartina 46-year-old Valencian journalist and bookseller, and Alvaro Mateuta 22-year-old Marketing and Advertising student. They are dedicated to disseminating literary content: they tell what their latest readings have been, what has attracted them the most and why or why not they recommend it.
The question arises when searching the Internet, and the majority of the works belong to the young adult genre. “Many books are classified there, but there is also room for many others,” explains Mateut. The content of her partner in this report, who is in charge of disseminating crime novel publications, is evident. Not so mainstream like the ones that go viral on the internet every week.
Companies like Penguin Random saw the opportunity almost immediately. “TikTok helps boost a huge catalogue of books and authors that were among the #BookTok favourites,” explains Agustín Paz, head of social media and events. on-line of the publisher. In this case, most of the authors and works are part of that mass mainstream of the network. But that doesn’t mean that other writers don’t have a place on TikTok. In fact, some of them go from being complete unknowns to stars. This is the case of Elena Armas, a writer who became a bestseller thanks to speaking in a two-minute clip in 2020 about a work she had self-published on Amazon. The success of that video has led her to sign with Penguin Random House, have her works translated into several languages, and go on tour in the US last September.
Fatima Martinez, who is also the author of The TikTok Book (Anaya Multimedia, 2021), emphasizes: “In the app There is pop-up content and mainstreamIt is true that the second is more abundant. But it also happens that there are many products and creators that start out as emerging, go viral and become mainstream”. And he adds: “No one can control the algorithm. So far, it has been impossible. Making content go viral on TikTok is a matter of trial and error.”
“The app “It is the new showcase of the industry,” says Iñaki Monsalve, who collaborated with the producer of the first triumphant
The music industry has also made the leap to the platform to promote new talent. Artists such as Leo Rizzi —now under the umbrella of Warner Music— have been born there, Mafalda Cardinal —under Sony Music—. The first one, began gradually uploading versions of Coldplay or Harry Styles, among others. International recognition came to him when he published his song Amapolas in 2021. Now he tours festivals, venues and television sets with his songs. Cardenal, on the other hand, saw success almost in the blink of an eye a year ago. He says that he never thought that his song, Your fanwould catapult her to fame: she now has more than a million and a half monthly listeners on Spotify, her songs top the most listened to lists and she is involved in a tour of Spain and Latin America.
Other emerging artists have also managed to make the jump from the TikTok screen to smaller labels. An example of this is Lucía Decker, Lu Decker on the platformwhere she has 2 million followers and more than 35 million likes. Her manager, Iñaki Monsalve, from Music Hit Factory, met her thanks to a mashup (a musical base in which one or more musical pieces are combined) that she made online during the pandemic with Luenco, one of the artists of her company. At the time, the singer was only 15 years old.
Monsalve was involved in Mass Music, the precursor to Vale Music, which was the production company in charge of leading the artistic career of the triumphantthe artists from Operation Triumph 1More than 20 years later, the manager compares that television speaker with that of the app: “TikTok is the new showcase for the music industry.”
Lidia Aguilar and Claudia Duque (her stage name is Claudia Leon) are two emerging artists aged 22 and 21 who use the internet to find their audience. “One of the big disadvantages of TikTok is that you depend on the algorithm, on what goes viral,” they explain over the phone. Despite this, both of them, thanks to social media, are seeing their artistic careers take off: they have announced a tour of different venues in Spain and Duque published his first single On April 25.
Both the experts and the creators who have participated in this report agree: the key to making cultural content go viral on TikTok is in the algorithm. And that does not mean that it promotes one type of video or another. It should promote what is most popular. mainstream or the emerging one. It is true, experts point out, that there are techniques to make a video get more views, but its algorithm is uncontrollable. Fátima Martínez sums it up: “There is no key to success on TikTok.”
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