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Let's get into South Arcade. Hailing from Oxford in the UK, and they're running with Lab Records - this small but diverse label. But the real feature of the group is they have consistently found an increasingly viral success on TikTok by doing simple formats that play to the groups greatest strengths. With their latest banger “2005” climbing Spotify’s Viral 50 they pain a clear path of how to use genre tropes and niche cultural humor to get their songs to the right listeners and continue to expand their audience. They have proven to be one of the bands to watch in this scene that have both an infectious sound (I am personally a huge fan) and really get how to get their music to spread with smart marketing.

BACKGROUND

Their story starts around 2021 on TikTok, but they really started dropping songs in 2022 - about 10 of them. The cool thing is you can really hear how their sound's changed. While some bands might take down their early stuff, keeping it up lets you hear how they've grown - and it's pretty interesting. Their earlier sound had this Limp Bizkit-meets-Gwen Stefani vibe, kind of like that first PVRIS record (which, funny enough, is how I first heard them - Spotify kept pushing "Sound of an Empty Room" to me -whenever I would revisit PVRIS debut ((which I often do)).

Looking at the numbers: They were hanging around 1,000 monthly Spotify listeners until things clicked with their TikTok game and even a year ago were hovering around 10,000 monthly listeners. ChartMetric only shows us two years back, but you can see that exact moment when TikTok started working for them - it just starts popping off once they figured out how to get that traffic over to Spotify.

Let's dig into their TikTok and see what they're doing right.

TIKTOK JOURNEY

They jumped on TikTok in 2021, and honestly, they were pretty rough at first - which is actually a great lesson. Like a lot of artists we've looked at, they started out covering songs that don't really match their style - Mike Posner's "Please Don't Go," Lil Nas X's "Montero (Call Me By Your Name)." They were trying to ride that wave when Glass Animals' "Heat Waves" was huge, but were only pulling a couple thousand views.

Now, a lot of you would love those numbers, but here's the thing - some of these views probably came later after they started blowing up. The real story is how long they kept at it. It took them 18 months of consistent posting before they were regularly hitting 10,000 views. The breakthrough came with their Muse cover that hit 40K, and you can see their strategy shift - they started taking one concept and really milking it with multiple videos.

CONTENT STRATEGY

DON’T BE AFRAID TO REPEAT YOURSELF

As you can see here on their feed, they're not afraid to repeat themselves - they'll take one scenario and just keep making slightly different content with it over and over. And this is a really good lesson. This repetition thing they do, it helps you recognize them, like "oh, that's that band, that's that sound." Funny enough, I didn't even connect at first that this was the "Sound of an Empty Room" band. I just knew them as this band Spotify kept playing that I never skipped.

BEING RECOGNIZABLE

Their strategy is super sharp—they’re recognizable while keeping things fresh. When something works, they don’t just move on like a lot of people do. They milk it with variations, locking in that “Oh, it’s them” feeling.

Take their Muse cover. It hit nearly a million views, and they built on it, posting more covers in the same setting with similar outfits. You can literally see them figuring it out—establishing their look and sound while staying consistent..

@southarcade

It’s twilight season again guys. 🧛‍♀️🥀 1 year since we did this tune. #twilight #alternative #teamedward #edwardcullen #muse #supermassiveblackhole

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