At this writing, SiriusXM’s TikTok Radio is only a few hours old, but I wanted my First Listen to include the debut of the “Trending 10” countdown or, as they were positioned, “the bops of the week” with Cat Haley, former afternoon host of WFLC (Hits 97.3) Miami. I’ve now heard the channel for about three hours and first blush observations include the following:
- After three hours anyway, TikTok Radio, positioned as “Viral Hits and sounds from the FYP [For You Page],” feels more like a brand-new format than anything heard on broadcast radio for a while, even compared to Australia’s TikTok Trending channel that preceded it, or the Pandora Now channel next door on Sirius XM.
- To that end, there are some stretches where a mainstream radio person will recognize streaming’s greatest hits, current (“Permission to Dance”), recurrent (“Supalonely”), or from the first decade (Mike Posner, “Please Don’t Go”; Kid Cudi, “Day ‘N’ Night”). But even during the “Trending 10,” Haley warned that there would be some songs that were likely new to listeners.
- That said, TikTok Radio may be the best packaging of “viral hits” so far, in part because it has the best brand name for such a format. Like Radio Disney two decades ago, which helped codify the various phenomena of the Disney Channel, one of TikTok Radio’s best utilities for the industry will be putting streaming hits in an understandable framework for mainstream radio.
- Like Radio Disney when that station went all-current a few years ago, it’s also a good place to hear viral hits in hot rotation now as opposed when they work their way up to power at Mainstream CHR. A song like Lizzo’s “Rumors,” which plays roughly once an hour here, might get that treatment from broadcast CHR on its premiere day, but then it will be another 6-10 weeks before power rotation is an option. Having a real TikTok format frees Top 40 radio from the temptation/burden of becoming TikTok radio and allows them to cherrypick the music that makes sense, and also to consider those songs at their most phenomenal.
- The imaging, meant to sound like it’s voiced virtually, is a nice update on the deadpan random zingers of a Bob- or Jack-FM for a new cohort of listeners. (“TikTok Radio knows what it sounds like in your dog’s head all the time.”)
- Also unique: the station uses brief stretches of the older songs that have become the famous outliers of TikTok (Bee Gees, Louis Prima) that play for only a few seconds, just as they would in a video, but are played as songs, not sweepers.
- During regular format, the breaks were rotating vignettes from TikTok Radio’s presenters and artists, some about individual songs, some about topics (like how hit songs by content creators were a logical extension of the tradition hit songs from TV personalities or actors). While the expectation for channels like this is that you will not hear a traditional, real-time jock shift, I found myself wondering how one would update a classic CHR presentation for this channel. I wanted TikTok’s musical immediacy plus radio’s immediacy. Then again, much of broadcast radio is no longer immediate.
The first Trending 10 countdown was at 3 p.m. It’s a weekly feature that will repeat through the weekend. For the same reasons of immediacy, I feel like it needs to be at least daily. If Top 40 radio was really dynamic enough to have a daily request countdown, shouldn’t TikTok Radio change constantly?
Here’s the Trending 10 from August 20. As did some of the other jock breaks, many of Haley’s jock breaks were about the videos that users were posting with a given song, including the inevitability of the No. 1 song already having its own TikTok dance, something that Haley noted she wasn’t good at.
10 – Sam Smith, “Like I Can” (2014)
9- Jojo x WizDaWiza, “What’s Da Jwett”
8 – Lizzo & Cardi B, “Rumors”
7 – Schoolboy Q & Kenrick Lamar, “Collard Greens” (2014)
6 – Tai Verdes, “A-O-K”
5 – Bfb Da Packman & Coi Leray, “Ocean Prime”
4 – Babyxsosa, “Everywhere I Go”
3 – Sub Urban f/Bella Poarch, “Inferno”
2 – Tha Kid Leroi & Justin Bieber, “Stay”
1 – Doja Cat, “Get Into It (Yuh)”
And here are the songs that followed to round out the hour:
- City Girls, “Twerkulator”
- Wombats, “Greek Tragedy”
- HD4president, “Touch Down 2 Cause Hell”
- Hoang Reed, “The Magic Bomb”
- Remi Wolf, “Photo ID”
- Masked Wolf, “Astronaut in the Ocean”
- $ilkmoney, “My Potna Dem”
- Walker Hayes, “Fancy Like”
- Pinkpantheress, “Just For Me”
- Ark Patrol & Veronika Redd’s “Let Go” (began the 4 p.m. hour and was preceded by a “Creator Invasion” feature with Lil Nas X introducing the song).
Update: I came back for the second countdown on Aug. 27. This one seemed to intersect even less with the pop mainstream. Note that this week’s countdown is bookended by two “bringbacks.”
10 – Olivia Rodrigo, “All I Want” (2020)
9- Wizkid, “Essence”
8 – Navos, “Believe Me”
7 – Moneymarr, “Mix It”
6 – Babyxsosa, “Everywhere I Go”
5 – Sueco, “Paralyzed”
4 – DJ Snake, “You Are My High”
3 – Sub Urban f/Bella Poarch, “Inferno”
2 –Doja Cat, “Get Into It (Yuh)”
1 –Sam Smith, “Like I Can” (2014)
