Hugely popular short video app TikTok is launching “TikTok Spotlight,” a program to discover and support independent and unsigned artists. TikTok Spotlight will offer an opportunity to build a community of followers and showcase music to a global audience.
As part of the program, TikTok will open a special channel for musicians to submit their music, making it available for TikTok users around the world to discover and use in their videos.
Kicking off the first season from Japan and Korea, TikTok will feature the musicians on TikTok and various music platforms, bringing them direct exposure to music fans as well as industry leaders, such as labels, publishers, artist management agencies, agents, topline songwriters, producers, and more (full list below).
TikTok Spotlight: The First Season
TikTok Spotlight will officially launch on April 5. Musicians who participate in the program can create an account and submit their original content through the TikTok Spotlight Portal (www.tiktok.com/tiktokspotlight ) during the submission period. Once cleared, the original music will go up in the app and be promoted in TikTok’s featured playlist, and shared with TikTok users for content creation. TikTok musicians will also be officially verified on their pages with a unique badge.
The program was unveiled in Seoul on March 28 and in Tokyo today. Over the next five months, TikTok Spotlight will feature two rounds of competition to select the Top 100 and Top 18 players to advance to the next round based on the popularity of their music and the judge panel’s opinions.
At the end of the season, the top 5-10 musicians will be selected through the final round and provided with production opportunities and other prizes.
The full list of TikTok Spotlight Partners
Japan
Partners (in alphabetical order)
- Avex Entertainment Inc.
- AWA
- LINE MUSIC
- LINE RECORDS
- Sony Music Labels Inc.
- Spotify
- SUMMER SONIC
- TinyVoice Production
- TuneCore JAPAN
- UNIVERSAL MUSIC LLC
- WARNER MUSIC JAPAN
Supporting Musicians
- Kana Adachi (足立佳奈)
- AKIRA (TinyVoice, Production)
- chay
- COLOR CREATION
- I Don’t Like Mondays.
- Ryosuke Imai (今井 了介, TinyVoice, Production)
- Leola
- MANABOON (TinyVoice, Production)
- MIYAVI
- MONKEY MAJIK
- Win Morisaki (森崎ウィン, PRIZMAX)
- Naoto Inti Raymi (ナオト・インティライミ)
- SUNNY BOY (TinyVoice, Production)
- TeddyLoid
- UTA (TinyVoice, Production)
Korea
Partners (in alphabetical order)
- 153 Joombas Music Group
- Amoeba Culture
- C-JES Entertainment
- Dee Company
- Major 9
- Melon
- Planetarium Records
- Space Oddity
- Universal Music Korea
- Warner Music Korea
Supporting Musicians
- Yoon Dohyun
- Yun Minsoo
- Dynamic duo
- Gummy
- XIA
- Hyuk Shin (Composer of Growl- EXO, worked with Justin Bieber, DEAN, SHINee, and many other Kpop idol groups)
- MRey (Producer – EXO, Super Junior, Monsta X, etc)
- Seulgi Park (Producer – Super Junior, Monsta X, F(X), etc)
- Moon Kim (Producer – GOT7, SF9, Sooyoung of Girl’s Generation, etc)
- JUNE (Producer – BTS, Soran, etc)
- Kei.G (Producer – Brown Eyed Soul, etc)