I don’t have a teenager at home anymore. So I don’t know how on-target the string of attempted teen-speak that Conan O’Brien reeled off on the Oscars Sunday night was. I do know that it contained both “rizz” and “six-seven,” which any self-respecting teenager undoubtedly gave up last fall when the adults began using it in skits like those, if not much earlier.
So, the first admirable thing to note about TikTok Radio From iHeart is that there is no attempt at “hello, fellow kids.” In fact, the 15-year-olds outside radio’s sway don’t seem to be the target as much as the adult women who decided TikTok was actually a source of useful information, not just random wackiness. The clue is an hourly series of vignettes, “Hacks on the 20s,” on topics like spring cleaning or why restaurant food tastes better than yours. (It’s the salt.) It’s a reminder that at this point, radio needs to repatriate adults, too.
TikTok Radio, positioned as “where your playlist meets your FYP,” debuted last Friday night on 28 iHeart HD subchannels and the iHeart Radio app, overseen by iHR’s Nick Gomez and Mike ‘McCabe’ Kerr. In New York, it’s on the HD-2 of Classic Rock WAXQ (Q104.3), seemingly to keep it from cannibalizing CHR sister WHTZ (Z100). (All of the simulcasts in other markets are on non-CHR frequencies.) The launch took place on the evening of March 13, live from South by Southwest, and was simulcast on iHR’s CHR stations as a “TiKTok Takeover.”
TikTok was already in business with iHR’s Australian licensee, ARN, whose TikTok Trending channel goes back about five years. Shortly after, SiriusXM rolled out a TikTok Radio format, which came to an abrupt halt in November, after the iHeart deal was announced.
The iHR version differs from its predecessors in one notable way. The previous stations replaced traditional DJs with a series of personalities who could just pop up to discuss random topics, particularly how songs were being used in various challenges and memes. From its launch, iHR had regular jocks, even at night and on the weekend, although the hourly features have other hosts, who interact with audio from various TikTok postings. I’ve long felt that any new national service would have to be fully staffed, and it’s a contrast with those local stations that are not.
Other recurring vignettes include an hourly “hot take” from a TikTok user (and the feature host’s reaction) as well as highlighting a “Challenge of the Week.” This week, that’s posting then-and-now pictures synched to Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” There are attitude sweepers based on memes — e.g., “He’s a 10, but he doesn’t listen to TikTok Radio from iHeart.” Listeners are encouraged to chime in on many of the features, either via TikTok or the iHR app’s talkback feature.
Often, the vignettes are teased 1-2 breaks ahead, like a content break on broadcast radio. In doing so, Radioinsight publisher Lance Venta notes, TikTok Radio often feels far more structured than TikTok itself. So far, there’s less of the attempts to replicate the “hey, guys” casualness of your favorite content creators than the other channels. That’s a deliberate choice, as explained elsewhere, to position the personalities as authorities, not amateurs.
There are also more “hits” as CHR listeners recognize them and less of an attempt to represent the musical chaos of TikTok. On our final monitor of the SXM version, there were Frank Ocean and a bringback from Christian pop artist Francesca Battistelli. In the top 10 countdown, there were Labi Siffre and Kid Cudi together, represented by recently resurgent songs from the ’70s and ’10s, respectively.
Overall, the new station is relying more on songs heard on Mainstream CHR. Often, the exceptions seem to be older (Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well”) or songs that nearly became CHR hits (Tyler the Creator’s “Sugar on My Tongue”). I have heard Don Toliver’s “E85” and She and Him’s “I Thought I Saw Your Face Today.” With CHR strapped for hits, there have been more streaming- and sync-driven bringbacks within the radio universe recently, and I have heard Dominic Fike’s “Babydoll” regularly so far.
Deciding what to acknowledge from TikTok has been a consistent challenge, and being OTA rather than subscription-only also makes it hard to play unedited versions like the SXM channel could. Should radio be acknowledging Kevin Gates’s 2013 “Satellites,” currently atop TikTok’s own charts? It’s currently getting only two spins anywhere in radio, on SiriusXM. What about the 2010 Drake song?
Part of what has made other TikTok Radio channels useful for me has been the chance to hear which songs work on the radio. If the iHR TikTok playlist expands even a little, it will be more useful for the chain’s own CHR PDs as a format lab. Besides, as PDs are quick to point out to label reps, the streaming audience is not just “the listeners that CHR would have.” They’re listeners who have made another choice that probably isn’t only about platform.
There’s also another consideration in meeting listeners where they are. The potential best thing about TikTok Radio is creating a path to radio listening for those not currently using broadcast radio on any platform. If you were to discover TikTok Radio through TikTok itself, your option would be a bio link that takes you to either download or play the iHeartRadio app. One hopes the iHR TikTok stream, tied as it is to at least one actual broadcast station, is encoded, lest it bring just a few extra QHs of listening radio’s way.
Here’s about 90 minutes of TikTok Radio with middayer Jon Comouche and afternoon host Becky Mits, just before 2 p.m., ET, March 16. He is part of the morning team at KBIG (104.3 MyFM) Los Angeles. She is the executive producer at KMYI (Star 94.1) San Diego. Rotations, as heard Monday, were actually looser than CHR — the tightest repeat time I heard was two hours. As heard on Q104-HD-2, the station was commercial-free.
Here’s TikTok Radio just before 2 p.m., March 16:
- The Weeknd f/Playboy Carti, “Timeless”
- Bruno Mars, “I Just Might” — the “00 ID promised “iHeart’s biggest hits”
- Taylor Swift f/Kendrick Lamar, “Bad Blood”
- Sombr, “Homewrecker”
- Tate McRae, “Sports Car” — a “Hot Takes” segment about Hayley Kiyoko
- Sienna Spiro, “Die on This Hill”
- Zara Larsson, “Midnight Sun”
- Disco Lines & Tinashe, “No Broke Boys”
- Leon Thomas, “Mutt” — Comouche praised a recent Song Exploder episode on the song
- Olivia Dean, “So Easy (To Fall in Love)” — preceded by a K-Pop Drop, audio of iHR’s Jojo interviewing the group MonstaX.
- Dominic Fike, “Babydoll” — followed by another weird-facts feature called Today Years Old; this one was about packaging tricks that make produce look better in the store
- Ariana Grande f/Mac Miller, “The Way”
- Ella Langley, “Choosing Texas”
- Sombr, “Back to Friends”
- Tyler, the Creator, “Sugar on My Tongue”
- Freya Skye, “Silent Treatment”
- Myles Smith, “Stargazing”
- Pink Pantheress f/Zara Larsson, “Stateside”
- Olivia Rodrigo, “Get Him Back”
- Olivia Dean, “Man I Need” (the 3:00 song)
- Raye, “Where Is My Husband!”
- Noah Kahan, “The Great Divide”
- Y2K & bbno$, “Lalala” — presented with the equivalent of a throwback stager
- Taylor Swift, “The Fate of Ophelia”
- Tame Impala & Jennie, “Dracula”
- Dua Lipa, “Houdini”
- Mariah the Scientist, “Burning Blue”
- Tate McRae, “Tit for Tat”
- Jack Harlow, “First Class”
- Harry Styles, “American Girls”
- Bad Bunny, “DtMF”
