The Music Industry Podcast
The Music Industry Podcast
How Artists Grow On TikTok And Instagram in 2026
We break down why algorithms matter more than followers and how artists convert short-form views into real streams. We share a practical plan to hook fast, iterate in public, build aesthetics that stop the scroll, and push momentum to Spotify.
• difference between TikTok reach and Instagram connection
• why followers matter less than watch time and comments
• how to hook in three seconds and sustain attention
• visual pacing, angle changes, and on-screen action
• outsourcing small tasks to save time
• using trial reels and public iteration safely
• the rise of high-aesthetic, social-first video
• planning one shoot to create 10–40 clips
• boosting near-winners with small ad spend
• turning social proof into Spotify momentum
• staying authentic over AI gimmicks
• using stories to build daily loyalty
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Just this week, one of our artists got a video hit 1.5 million views on Reels, 2 million views on TikTok, and it converted directly into streams. We've worked with artists for bloody years now.
SPEAKER_00:Too long.
SPEAKER_01:Way too long. So in this video, we want to talk about the do's, the don'ts, what platforms to look at, the algorithm changes, all that nerdy stuff. One thing that I found with socials throughout the years, which has been the leading thing above anything for content creation, consumption, everything, the algorithm leads all of it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, everything is algorithm driven now. So, like followers, for example, are not as important anymore as it was three years ago. So a lot of artists are still worrying about getting followers. Now it's a case of is the algorithm gonna push me out and is it going to push me out to the people who have seen my content previously?
SPEAKER_01:You have to treat Instagram and TikTok as two completely different social platforms now. In the past, it was very much everything you make for Instagram, just put it on TikTok. You'll be fine. They're two completely different platforms. Instagram, yes, reels are great for discoverability, but Instagram's a way to connect with your fans. It's a great way to tell them the story of the track, it's a great way to engage with them with stories, DMs, whatever it is. You can push them to buy tickets, move across the DSPs. TikTok isn't that. TikTok is a way to generate noise. So it doesn't matter if you've got 100,000 followers on TikTok because if your videos aren't performing, they're not performing. It doesn't matter. Someone with 100 followers could get better views than you, and even though you've got 100,000 followers. So the platforms are so different now because of the way people consume. So because it's algorithm-led, you've got to think about so much with each piece of content you put out. And we're gonna get so many points of people being like, this isn't my job, I don't want to. We'll try and dumb it down as much as possible in terms of the least time-consuming things to do and how to make sure that you're not just sat in front of your phone recording clips 24-7. But at the end of the day, social is the best way to engage with your fans. And if you want to build an audience and you want to be a full-time musician, you just can't ignore it.
SPEAKER_00:What can happen on social media is people can actually fall in love with a track and follow a track, and I think that's amazing now. So people can use it as a sound, but also hear your track again and again and again on social media, and that blows up the track, and later on, that's when you can start growing yourself as an artist because you have the platform of that track.
SPEAKER_01:If something's not for you, outsource a small thing. So I think artists have this thing of uh I can't afford to hire marketing. Completely get that. Marketing can be expensive, however, you can outsource small areas, whether that's with individuals or marketing agencies or whatever it is. So say you're really not great with coming up with the concepts, you can hire someone to do that, but you can film everything yourself. Or potentially you're great at coming up with concepts, but you have no idea how to capture the actual videos. Either way, the most important thing, like we're saying, is the algorithm's pushing stuff out. So you've got to think about all of those little things that the algorithm's looking at. So it's looking at shares, it's looking at comments. Everyone's obsessed with likes, but likes really don't make much of an impact, especially on TikTok. Like you're gonna want to get people commenting and engaging and have a high watch time over likes any day. So think about how you can get people to engage in that. And you don't need to be a social media genius, you just need to be personable. And I feel like people forget that social media, there's people on the other end of that screen. So being able to get people to care and to talk to you or to just feel something is the most important part.
SPEAKER_00:And there's there's two things that you need to make something go viral via the algorithm. All you need to do is get people to watch the video and hook them in in the first three seconds, then you've got to keep them watching for as long as you can. Now, when you're creating your content, you need to have that in mind all of the time. As soon as someone's gonna drift off, get bored, swipe again, you need things going on. And as an artist, it doesn't come naturally to you because if your song is good, surely people will get to the end. But that's not always the case. So you need to hook people in in the first three seconds, then keep them engaged. And that's the bit people forget. They think I've got people hooked in, great, I've done some weird upside down shit, but you need to have something that is going to keep them watching. So, for example, are you going to have a change of a camera angle, a change of person, a change of place, something that is going to be different? Is there going to be something else happening on screen behind you? Anything that is going to keep people watching. And as soon as they're about to drift off, boom, something else happens. As soon as they're about to drift off, boom, something else happens. And what's brilliant about what we're saying is previously people say, Oh, what about my followers though? Well, what about my followers? Because I don't want to spam them with the same stuff and try different things, but now you can because it's not about the followers anymore. Meaning, if something fails, try something different, try again, try again. And it's basically like buying lottery tickets. The more you buy, the more chance you have of winning.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think was going into 2026, the main thing that is changing is like you can confidently and unapologetically be doing trial and error in front of the public eye. In the past, if a video tanked, the algorithm would kind of punish you for it. Now every video is an opportunity with the algorithm. So even the introduction of trial reels, if you don't know what trial reels are, on Instagram, you can put out a video that goes out to your non-followers, which means you can trial it with them. If it works well, you can push it out to your fans, which means you don't have to feel apologetic for spamming people, like you said. You can trial it with TikTok. You're trialing it every single video because it's not even likely to hit your followers unless they're looking at their following page. So going into 2026, it's like this era of trial and error. Yeah. And like people are doing it in front of people and it's less embarrassing. Like no one, no one sees an artist's profile and looks at their views anymore. Instead, people are looking at the comments, people are personally choosing to interact with someone, like whether that's with your stories or whatever it is. So as an artist, if I were you right now, I'd feel more confident than ever. Yeah. Because like this is your time.
SPEAKER_00:It's about the art now.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, like it genuinely is. And same with the content. This is this is something that wasn't the case even like six months ago, but aesthetic matters more than ever. So the way that something looks, in the past, if you clipped up your music video and put it online, it would tank. Now, because people are so done with just shot on an iPhone footage, if you have something that's just beautiful, people are gonna engage. And we've gone down this route. We've got videographers across the globe now who are capturing social first content for artists, but with 4K cameras, and it just looks sick, and it's performing so well. We had an artist in Nashville last week, Kat Velesco, got some insane shots for her track Showpony, and it's about her being a pageant queen and everything. And the content is just flying on social. And imagine it as like short form music videos. So you're creating a music video, but you're creating it with TikTok, with Instagram in mind. So the shots are changing, or it just looks really cool. There's slow zooms. That kind of stuff would never have worked six months ago. Now we've got this whole other arm of the business focusing on that because artists need that more than ever. And yeah, it's just something that we didn't even predict, we just saw slowly happening and we jumped on it straight away. And the repercussions are insane for our artists right now. Like what they're seeing on social just by having some really aesthetically pleasing content is insane. And you can do that so easily now because even iPhone footage is so good.
SPEAKER_00:So looking at the bigger picture, when people go onto your profile now, they're actually going to see that you've used your song pre-release or post-release again and again and again in your content. And that's what we're saying. You don't need to worry about spamming your song anymore because you don't even need to promote your song anymore. All you have to do is create content around the song. So, for example, when Maddie arranges a shoot, you get how many bits of content do you think from a shoot? Anywhere between 10 and 40. 10 and 40 from one shoot, all of those reels, all of those TikToks get created using the same bit of the song on every single reel. All you're doing is changing small things between reels, but one of them out of that 40 will pop off and get the most views, and that'll be the winning one. But nobody cares about the other ones. Your audience didn't get the other ones, they didn't get presented with the other ones. Therefore, don't worry about using the same setting again and again, the same track again and again. Just get that winning formula.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, what I would a hundred percent recommend doing is when you plan to have a shoot now, because in the past you have to think, oh, I need to post constantly, I need to post constantly. Now, have a dedicated shoot day. Like think about your shoot day and shoot the whole track in one location, then move to another location, shoot the whole track in that location. You can slice that up and then you trial that out because you have no idea how the market's gonna respond. You might think the chorus is the one that's gonna pop off. The bridge is what popped up. Like you just don't know. So don't be afraid to just test it with the market and see how people react with each part of the video, each part of the song. Like Alex was saying as well, where one video will pop off, the ad strategy as well for social is completely different. So, very much in the past, artists didn't really want to spend on ads, it was all organic. It's more competitive than ever now. So, what you have to do is focus on the videos that's starting to pop off slightly and then invest in them further. Because the algorithm is pretty savage and the social media world as a whole is so being able to compete, it can be quite slow. So introducing ads can just speed up that process so much more. So, TikTok, Instagram, just putting a little bit of money behind those high performers, you're not gonna be wasting money. Whereas if you're spending on every single video that's coming out, you haven't given it a chance to get pushed out yet. So if you've got a release coming, is shoot that that content, that aesthetically pleasing stuff, wait to see what starts to pop off, and then invest a little bit in the ad side stuff.
SPEAKER_00:And of course, if you're worried about not getting the streams, not getting the engagement, what you're doing is raising awareness for yourself. So, no, they're not following you. But what they're doing is listening to your track, they're hearing your track. Then, because you've been doing all this build-up, in your Spotify for artists submission, you can say the track has already had this many views on TikTok and has a lot of momentum already. Then you're more likely to go on an editorial. Then, because people have so many masses have heard your track already and they know that it's good and they can link it to an artist, they're going to stop and listen to it. Then a Spotify editor is going to pick that up on the stats of the playlist and say, hold on a second, everyone's actually listening to this track and not skipping it on my playlist. Let's put it on more playlists, bigger playlists. That's how you end up popping off seriously big.
SPEAKER_01:We'll do a whole other video on Spotify because I don't think we've done a video on Spotify in a while, and that's changed as well. Like the algorithm is more important than ever. And the push from social to Spotify is more important than ever because it helps with that algorithmic push. So, yes, you might be on genre-specific playlists. Yes, you might be running ads from social to Spotify. But if you have some heavy hitter videos pushing people to Spotify, the data is going to show people are streaming it in the app, they're adding it to playlists, plus they're coming from other platforms. The algorithm is going to reward you big time there. And if you can get the algorithm pushing you out, the streams are exponential from there.
SPEAKER_00:Finally, I just want to mention AI. Everyone's on AI at the moment, and it can do some phenomenal image and video generation, but it's not there yet. I haven't seen an artist implement it yet successfully. Yeah. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't concentrate on it too much right now. I'd concentrate more on being authentic because we've heard about these AI artists on Spotify, and people are going to look for authenticity and look for an artist that they can know they can go and see live. And if if you jump on AI, it means hundreds of thousands of other artists are also jumping on AI, which means you're at the point where people are going to look for authenticity because it'll be flooded. So I would stay away from AI and be someone who can get in front of the camera and can perform on camera. Therefore, you'll beat all of the other AI-generated artists.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, 100% agree. And I also think with the authenticity stuff, because people want to see raw, real stuff, stories are going to become more and more important. Because, yes, they're going to discover you through great content, but if they're wanting to engage with you every single day, they're much more likely to fall in love with an artist and become a dedicated fan who is going to go watch shows, buy merch, whatever it is, if there's some authenticity to it. And that will be through stories always, because that's the way that people consume content really, really quickly. Everything else you can think about that high quality content, but stories just be raw, really yourself, however, you want to connect with the audience. Obviously, some artists don't want to be too personable. Think of a way that you can connect with them, then that doesn't mean that you are kind of giving yourself to them entirely.
SPEAKER_00:I think this also to wrap it up. This should be phenomenal news for artists. You alluded to it earlier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what you wanted, guys. You wanted to be able to upload your music, show your art, show yourself, and then the algorithm pushes you out. You don't need to do a dance anymore. You don't need to do a trend, you don't need to um lip sync to a random video anymore. All you need to do is have good music, good aesthetic, know the basic framework of how to make a video go viral and get pushed out, and you're done. It's what you always wanted. So get uploading, get practicing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And if you're looking for any help on the social front, whether it's content creation, getting our videographers down to shoot some content for you, whether it's just content strategies, ads management, we've got all of it in house. So I'll leave a form in the description so you can submit your music there. It might be a good fit for us. And if you enjoyed the video, give it a like, subscribe, and we'll see you in the next one.