Promoting music through user-generated content? The diverse effects of TikTok on music discovery

TikTok and its user-generated short-form videos have largely disrupted the ways in which labels and artists used to promote their music. Numerous cases emerged of older songs randomly getting a second life or of artists building their careers TikTok-first. Yet, the debate on broader effects of short-form videos on music still echoes the 2000s concerns on digital piracy: is it additional promotion, or substitution for other channels? We study this in the context of the strategically important chart longevity across four diverse platforms: major and smaller audio streaming (Spotify and Deezer), audio-visual streaming (YouTube) and a discovery tool (Shazam). We analyse whether time and country-specific TikTok reach allowed songs going viral in the platform to retain their positions for longer at music charts and apply propensity score matching to study the effects across songs with similar TikTok virality potential. We find that the effects of TikTok are not uniform and seem stronger for Deezer, YouTube and Shazam than for Spotify. They also seem more positive for more recent songs on audio streaming services but with opposite being true for YouTube and Shazam. We discuss these findings in the context of other research in different contexts, mainstreaminess, (re)discovery channels and promotion.