Why Musicians' TikToks and Reels Keep Flopping

What if I told you that the reason most of you are failing at getting your TikTok Reels and YouTube Shorts to get tons of views on the algorithm is that you don't even know what the goal is. And I know some of you are thinking: “The goal is virality.” And sure, in the same way that the goal of a game is to win, that's kind of the case. But really, knowing how you win regularly is actually what you need to know.

Well, I've come to figure out that most of you have no idea what that goal is. So in this newsletter, I'm going to show you how to fix that, so by the end of this newsletter, you're going to know how to study the game so you know how to score big views regularly, so you can get in front of the fans most likely to like your music.

When 99% of you are making content, you're either guessing or imitating. And as I'm sure you know, since you're a musician, and I know how most of you perform in school, having talked to way too many of your teachers at the dog park, I'm familiar with your test scores. Guessing and imitating don't allow you to learn anything, as you can't replicate success when it matters in the real world. And as much as TikTok and Instagram are filled with fake ass losers, it sadly, somehow, is also the real world.

However, the key is that if we're guessing and imitating, as the game changes or people improve at it, we'll get left behind if we don't understand how to win and consistently reach our goal.

Enjoying this? Forward it to a music friend you’d like to be closer to and start a discussion!

The Importance of Shares and Inbound Links

So what's the goal, and how do you learn that? So, a thing we've all learned about every algorithm, Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, Apple Music, TikTok, Twitter, Blue Sky, Threads, Deezer, hell, even those platforms you see listed on your distributor like Jukes and Spindlet, it's all the same. What gets shares and brings in inbound links is what they push more meaning that if you are what brings people to their platforms, they push you more, and since this causes some confusion about what in the hell inbound links are, what I mean when you link YouTube from an Instagram story, they love that on YouTube. Granted, Instagram hates it and punishes you, but that's another story for another time.

Anyway, this means two things.

1. When you send out email blasts and link to Spotify when your song first drops, then when your music video is released, you do another blast and link to YouTube. This helps trigger the algorithm as fans engage with your content, prompting Spotify or YouTube to push it to more people, feature it in suggestions, and display it on the browse page.

2. When fans like what they see and click the share button, which leads another friend to watch the video and stay engaged with a high average view duration, YouTube will promote it to more browse pages. Similarly, on TikTok and Reels, it gets placed on the For You page.

Over and over again, we see what is getting shared, whether that's Reels inside Instagram DMs, or what's discussed in WhatsApp or Snapchat, or SMS group chats, is what gets big numbers. But even if you're just aiming to be mid-viral, trying to reach people most likely to like your music in a small niche of the internet, the same philosophy applies. Especially with trial reels, since what we see is that the ones that perform best often have a ton of shares on them. And you're going to be shocked to hear this too, these platforms love content that brings people in from another place and keeps people engaged on their app and sticking around and scrolling.

Creating Content That Engages and Shares

So it makes sense that when we're thinking about what video to make, we want to make them with the goal of what gets shared, right? But some of you are going to a bad place, you're thinking you're going to run into Chat GPT and make Mr. Beast and Jenny Hoyos style videos — or even worse, some of you are thinking that you make art, and you can't have art involved because no one is going to share art.

Now, the problem with these thoughts is that we

1) We want these videos not to go to everyone; we want them to go to the people most likely to like your music, and in your culture.

2) If the video doesn't highlight your music in it and it blows up well, people will want more of the video that blew up from you, and if they follow you because you showed how to make chicken tenders on the sidewalk? Well, first off, I hope you get shut down for a health violation, but secondly, it's not going to do you a lot of good aside from the dollars YouTube will pay you for the millions of views you get when you start barfing everywhere.

And remember, a lot of the key here is not mega virality. We recently discussed this in a previous newsletter about how mid virality is better than mega virality— aka you want the people who are most likely to like your type of music seeing your videos and going viral to them, and that could be a lot better than the entire internet seeing your music since that often doesn't do you as much good.

It’s Never Been Easier…

And yeah, I know some of you also whine as you hear all this that "I shouldn't have to do this, it sucks being a musician in 2025." I'm sorry, Chief, but it's been like this since the 80s. I was watching this music video the other day from the 90s it was by an artist called Lucas called Lucas with the lid off and when everyone watched that video they'd then have to call MTV or this stupid music request network called the box and then tell them to play it again so that their friend can finally see the video and they can discuss it.

The game was the same even back then, before many of you were born, what got people calling their friends even on landlines and yelling "YOOO" was the same thing that worked almost half a fucking century ago to get music heard, and it's just way easier for you now.

Study What Makes Other Artists Shareable

So let me show you how to do it right since you've got way better tools to do this. Unlike previous decades, you now have a public way to study what gets people excited enough to share and see videos over and over again.

All you do is look at other artists' videos and look at which ones get lots of shares. Simply scroll through and see that symbol underneath the comments icon on Instagram? Beneath it, you can see the number of shares, and the same thing goes for TikTok.

And anybody can see this. And of course, since YouTube likes to keep things a bit more private, they don't share this publicly, so skip shorts. But as we know, TikTok and Instagram don't often elevate the same content since the audiences that test your videos on are different from account to account, and the way they measure performance is different.

Some of you will say my favorite artists have been posting for 5 or 6 years— I'm not doing all that. Great, hit the button that says “popular” when you’re on anyone’s TikTok page, and it'll start making your job way easier—I should say shares are not the only thing that stimulates the algorithm, but they're the most predictable.

Bookmarks do it, and lots of comments will do it too; there are tons of factors, but this is what you can study that you can count on, and we're trying to find something that's reliable, to make all this algorithm stuff a little less confusing.

And what you learn by studying what gets Shares is twofold. If you're a country artist studying a viral black metal artist, study the videos that get shared by their audience and say, “How could I make the same video but in my world?” since you want to appeal to your people culturally. If you see these artists using a certain editing style that was captivating, well, you can bring that into your world, and no one will know you took it from them.

How To Create From What You Learn

And if you're studying artists similar to you in your culture, think about what they're doing that inspires shares. How you can bring this to your audience, particularly what the vocabulary, symbolism, and other traits of the video are that they are part of the culture you're in, and how they are using tricks within it to appeal to their audience.

And if you see an artist that's in your culture, do a prop that's a good commentary on the genre, well, do you have a different comment you can bring to the discussion?

Especially since doing these things in your culture will often help you get seen by the people most likely to like your micro-genre of music. So once you see what gets shares, the goal for the type of content you should make starts to become clear, and it becomes about how you do it yourself and what works for you.

Study Multiple Artists

We know the goal and can start to understand what we should be striving for, but without this, we're just guessing and imitating. So I really urge you to do this with more than just 4 artists, like a lot of you do. Doing this with different artists each day for a few weeks and taking notes really starts to make you an expert.

And honestly, when I talk to a lot of the artists who have blown up on short-form video apps, well, this is what got them there, and that's why I'm telling you this.

Thanks for reading.