TikTok vs Douyin vs Instagram Reels vs YouTube Shorts vs Triller: How to go Viral on Short Video

TikTok vs Douyin vs Instagram Reels vs YouTube Shorts vs Triller: How to go Viral on Short Video

What is Short Video?

It is the video content that is made and shared on TikTok and similar video platforms like Instagram reels and YouTube Shorts. In China they have Douyin (TikTok’s big sister), Kuaishou, Watermelon and Bilibili.

How To Get Your Music On Short Videos

1. Go to the App, make the video, add your music and upload yourself.

   1. This is important because by posting your own videos and music, your audience will get to know you and find your music. What if you don’t have any audience? If you build it they will come.

   2. It can be a paid post so other audiences can see your videos and hear your music.

1. Get your music to the short video platforms’ library with a distribution service so others can use your music on their videos.

   1. This is important because your music is available for others to use. The usage of your music is tracked and royalties get paid back to you. Word of video (word of mouth): More people use your music in their videos, not only do these videos get played over and over again, but they get shared more, which means that more people will listen and use your music in their own videos. Viral baby!

Go Viral

We have now seen this happen with Musicinfo artists. It can be 10’s thousands of streams a day or 10’s of millions streams a day. What do you consider viral? Both of these scenarios tell me that a heck of a lot of people are using your music.

What music is getting picked up? Well, right now our top artist is a breakbeat artist getting around 12 million hits a day. This has been going on for a few weeks now. Generally there tends to be more instrumental music: classical, ambient, cinematic music getting used, but our 2nd viral artist right now is a hip hop artist, so go figure.

Royalties

The question I often hear from some artists is, “Can you show me a report of the level of royalties paid out.” The short answer is no I can’t, I can’t tell you how much specific artists are getting paid. The ironic thing about this scenario is that most often I see this question come from artists who have a very small following on other music platforms like Spotify.

I am interested in all our artists, and it is not unnatural that my attention would be piqued by artists whose success is more obvious than others. And then when I say, “Sorry I can’t share the reports with you, I can’t tell you how much you will get paid,” they don’t sign up, they don’t distribute their music. 

The amount of payout is growing. Services in China have now been more or less established by way of offering free subscriptions; there are 100s of millions of MAUs. Now these free users are becoming paying users, upping the amount of pay per stream to the creators. Listeners are paying more for your music.

Get To The Point

The point of getting your music on short video is that your music can get visibility and plays like never before, like it never would have if you had left it on the shelf. But then those who bravely have signed up have the potential to get 12 million streams every day! 

Now, do you care how much you are getting paid now? Yes of course you do. But, what is even more important is the visibility and followers that you have now gained, millions of new listeners who now know who you are, who now have heard your music. You have a massive new fanbase that you can build on. 

You need to hop on the bandwagon and ride the wave of your viral music on the short video platforms. Boost your streaming music. Short videos that use viral songs do better. Make videos with your music and share links to your streaming music. 

Top Short Video Platforms 

TikTok: 

Does it need an explanation? Well, I guess for any of the other 6.7 billion people in the world not using it. Please take a look at our previous blog: What Artists Need To Know About TikTok And Douyin.

Douyin: 

Tiktok’s big sister in China. Visually almost identical, Douyin came out first and is a much more robust platform allowing users more options and services that its little sister doesn’t provide. Both keep to their own rooms and are not allowed to play with each other’s friends.

Douyin vs Tiktok

Douyin’s top posts are based on comedy or pets, while TikTok’s top posts are more arts-based, featuring lip-syncs and trending dances. With posts that have context, a quick caption usually does the trick in TikTok. Douyin videos are more content-driven than TikTok. 

Instagram Reels:

Now instagram draws you in even harder into a mélange of, “look at what I can do!”

YouTube Shorts:

Has come up a little short compared to the rest but has more long term potential for professional  users.

Triller:

Been around the block longer than TikTok and likes to hang with music groupies.

Short Video Comparison Chart

TIKTOK VS DOUYIN VS INSTAGRAM REELS VS YOUTUBE SHORTS VS TRILLER: HOW TO GO VIRAL ON SHORT VIDEO

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Sources

https://www.eggsist.com/en/insights/tiktok-vs-douyin-which-are-the-main-differences

https://influencermarketinghub.com/what-is-triller

​​https://gab-china.com/what-are-the-main-differences-between-douyin-vs-tiktok

https://www.makeuseof.com/tiktok-vs-instagram-reels-vs-youtube-shorts

https://vidooly.com/blog/instagram-reels-vs-youtube-shorts/

https://wallaroomedia.com/blog/social-media/tiktok-statistics/

https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2021/12/07/converting-douyin-engagement-and-why-it-s-not-the-same-tiktok

https://www.statista.com/statistics/325587/instagram-global-age-group/

https://earthweb.com/instagram-reels-statistics/

https://filmora.wondershare.com/tiktok/triller-vs-tiktok.html

https://targetmarket.com/2021/04/instagram-reels-vs-tiktok

https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-reels/

TikTok vs Douyin vs Instagram Reels vs YouTube Shorts vs Triller: How to go Viral on Short Video

What Artists Should Know About Next Big Sound

Perhaps you don’t sell too many albums on iTunes, or have that many SoundCloud plays or YouTube views. But maybe, just maybe, your music is really popular in some far off corner of the digital universe you never even knew about, and all that “exposure” you’ve racked up over the years is paying off behind the scenes.

Next Big Sound provides detailed online music analytics to measure the growth of bands on streaming services and social networks. It doesn’t cover everything, but it casts a wide enough net to shatter an artist’s dreams with cold, hard data. I know it did mine! <sniff> Cidney at NBS agreed to give me an artist credit for one month so that I could write this article, way back in April. Hopefully she’ll forget to downgrade my account.

Features

The screenshot above shows a dozen “key metrics” of my choosing. It’s an easy way to focus on what’s important to me, and not get bogged down in all those numbers. So for example, I could replace Rdio plays with Vine loops, Last.fm shouts, or unique pageviews of my website.

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MusicThinkTank.com | October's Most Popular Posts

MusicThinkTank.com takes great pride in being a renowned resource for all who comprise today’s music industry. We appreciate the conversations you start, the advice you share, the projects you promote, and the feedback you share and we want to encourage your continued efforts.

Thanks to our loyal readers and contributors, October was a great month for MusicThinkTank.com - so today, we’d like to share that success with you by highlighting October’s most popular posts. On behalf of MusicThinkTank.com, thank you for your support. We enjoy providing a unique platform where the music industry really can think out loud!

Laura Schneider, MusicThinkTank.com Community Manager

34,708   MTT (Journal) 4,685   MTT - 49 Ways to Get Free Music Promotion (Journal Entry) 4,606   MTT Open - 10 Awesome Independent Record Labels [LIST] (Journal Entry) 3,967   MTT - A&R Tips: The Art Of The Press Kit (Journal Entry) 3,755   MTT - Top 10 Rules For Better Songwriting (Journal Entry)

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How Stuff Spreads – Gangnam Style vs. Harlem Shake

In a new study looking at ‘How Stuff Spreads’ Face has identified key components that make things go viral. Looking at the spread on Twitter of two global memes, Gangnam Style vs Harlem Shake, Face discovered eight common characteristics which it says led to them becoming viral phenomena, generating thousands of spin-off versions and billions of views.

The eight common characteristics are:

1. Bursts and Rises: There are 2 models of virality.

The Burstmodel is bottom-up:the variations are more powerful then the original seed and there’s no clear leadership or narrative. The meme relies on community relevance to spread.

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MusicThinkTank.com Weekly Recap: How Often Should You Play? 6 Drawbacks to Playing More Shows

• Ariel Hyatt | 6 Key Tactics For Organic Success on YouTube From Hip Hop Artist Robert Scott

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• Dillon Roulet | The Musician of Oz

The Weekly Batch

Musicians are expected to be everywhere these days. We’re interacting on social networks, following up on blog comments, keeping our profiles on countless music sites up to date, and checking our stats and analytics with a variety of online tools. It’s enough to make a lifelong indie yearn for a label - one with a marketing department!

Most of these items don’t need to be addressed daily, but they do need to be performed on a regular basis. Tasks that have to be done on a given day, I schedule. Everything else is relegated to The Weekly Batch™ (note: not actually trademarked). I tackle the entire list as a single to-do item on Friday afternoons, when I find it hard to do much of anything else. Here’s my latest iteration:

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YouTube's Dirty Little Secret

Ever spotted a terrible video on YouTube with an inconceivably high view count? Of course you have. Would it make you feel better knowing that most of those “views” were completely automated and only lasted 30 seconds with the sound turned off?

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Why "Post Your Twitter or Facebook Page" Discussions Don't Work

Do you used Linkedin? If so, Linkedin Groups is a great feature to network and get to know professionals in industries beyond your current circle. It’s also a great way to promote your own professional skills, whether those are in music, marketing, movie making, or anything else. 

As a member of nearly two dozen Linkedin Groups, I almost always see the same top post in every group: a callout for members to post their social media sites in a discussion group and to encourage those individuals to follow one another. The reality is that it doesn’t work.

How often do you see people posting, maybe even posted something yourself and then followed through by looking at each of the few hundred comments to check out each person’s page? Even the people who start these groups don’t see a substantial increase in their numbers (they usually have far less followers than comments on that thread).

So how do you get real followers?

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What Artists Should Know About Headliner.fm

Headliner.fm is a platform for trading recommendations with other artists on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. You “buy” recommendations using a virtual currency called band bucks, which can be purchased outright for real money or earned by recommending other artists.

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One For All, or All For One? Solo Artistry Versus the Band in the Age of Social Media

The music industry today seems, to the casual observer, a veritable “Chicken Little” scenario, with all its members and participants, heads craned piously upward, scurrying about as if the sky were falling—the firmament of their reliable, decades-old business model crashing about them. From the haughtiest record company executive to the lowliest basement-dwelling ensemble, everyone in the music business is struggling to shore up their respective rungs on the industry ladder.

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What Artists Should Know About ReverbNation's Promote It

Running a Facebook ad campaign is confusing. You bid for ad placement, but the price you pay bears little relation to your bid. What’s the difference between reach and social reach, connections and clicks, CPC and CPM? More importantly, is there any way to tell how many people played, downloaded, and shared your song, or signed up for your mailing list? (answer: no, there’s not)

ReverbNation’s new Promote It tool addresses those shortcomings, and then some. You pick a song, photo, and budget, and it automatically generates dozens of optimized Facebook ads based on past Promote It campaigns, and continually optimizes your campaign based on the performance of those ads. New fans click through to customized landing pages that track not just clicks and likes, but plays, downloads, shares, wall posts, and mailing list signups. As I’m quoted as saying in the press release, “It’s the ultimate ‘set it and forget it’ fan-making machine!” I was invited to try it out and provide feedback during the beta period, and I’m flattered that some of my suggestions made it into the final product. So far I’ve run six campaigns. Let’s walk through the creation and performance of my latest and most successful one.

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Musician's Arsenal: Killer Apps, Tools & Sites - Onesheet

Welcome back to Musician’s Arsenal! In this edition, I’m very excited to be presenting Onesheet to you. Onesheet is a very easy and effective web presence solution for musician’s struggling to create an attractive website. For those of us who can’t build a nice WordPress site to save our lives, Onesheet is here to save the day (while I don’t want to give the impression that creating a Onesheet excludes you from needing a website, this is a fantastic option that can take care of your web presence needs while you build a website the right way).

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Prescreen Your Future Fans with Twitter

Two months ago, I began implementing Ariel Hyatt and Carla Lynne Hall’s strategy to increase my Twitter following, as laid out in their book Musician’s Roadmap to Facebook and Twitter. The basic idea is to follow potential fans in the hope that they will follow back. I discovered that the more selective I am in choosing who to follow, the more likely I am to connect with people who may become genuine fans. I’ll share my process and results below.

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Myspace - Now With Glitter

The first thing you should know about the Product Manager for MySpace Music is that he’s an independent musician. He’s in a band called Big Kid. That’s him playing the drums. He also writes most of the songs. I found that both encouraging and surprising.

Myspace Product Manager Steve Clark approached me through my blog to have a chat about what was going on at Myspace, the big changes that they were making, and what they were doing to belatedly address the fact that they have access to (as I put it) every frickin’ band on the planet.

Now, I’ve been critical of Myspace in the past (to say the least). My complaints have been many and varied, but my concerns have been especially with respect to the fact that all of their efforts in the music space have been directed exclusively at major labels - and the fact that as an interface, both for artists and for fans, it’s a pile of crap.

A friend of mine once joked that you can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter. Basically, Myspace has been rolled in glitter.

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