One helpful way of growing a channel on TikTok is to jump on a trend when it’s still emerging. There are a few ways to stay on top of what’s new: TikTok has the ‘Discover’ tab, industry newsletters highlight hot topics and sounds, and there’s a new Music Hub for TikTokers in the UK. However, in the fast-moving world of TikTok, by the time trends are featured in these places, they are already somewhat mainstream and might be saturated by content.
Enter TrendTok, which aims to “solve a real pain point for those trying to build brands on TikTok’’ with one of the first analytics tools that tracks trends on the viral platform.
Having used machine learning and AI to analyse flight information for their company Pilota, Saniyah Shah and her partner Omer Winrauke created TrendTok when they realised how they could use similar tech to predict TikTok trends.
TrendTok asks for some simple user information – where they’re based, what their current growth goal is, and what the niches they focus on are – and the app will then suggest a “Personalised for You” list of trends relevant to the user, “giving creators an extra leg up before the trend is oversaturated”.
Recently soft-launched after consulting numerous creators and brands, TrendTok claims to track a lot of data that’s not seen in the actual TikTok app.
The app’s main interface is currently split into three sections: People, Places and Categories. The ‘Personalised For You’ list, with trending songs the app thinks are relevant for you is under the People section. Users can alter the data they previously entered to select new niches, locations and growth goals to fine-tune these selections. Next to this album are lists created around some of the biggest influencers on TikTok – such as Charli and Dixie D’Amelio, Michael Le, Addison Rae or Bella Porach – featuring trending sounds these influencers have used, ranked by current popularity. It’ll also show you whether the song is currently gaining or losing in popularity.
Given that TikTok is a geo-focussed app that pushes content to users in the same location first to test the video’s performance before providing global visibility, it’s crucial for creators to know what’s happening on TikTok in their country.
Thus, TrendTok’s Places tab helps creators to jump on a trend that already resonates with users in their location, increasing the likelihood that their video will perform well, and hopefully get onto more users’ ‘For You’ pages. Equally, artists looking to grow their audience in, for instance, France could spot an up-and-coming trending sound that does well in both their country and in France – possibly a way of getting in front of users in both countries. There’s a Global sound chart, and localised versions for the US, France and UK. Shah says that the platform is “slowly starting to add lists of more countries as we see TrendTok users pop up in different territories.”
Once a track gets into the Top 250 or Top 200, it will show up on TrendTok. For comparison, TikTok’s own UK-focused Music Hub shows only the Top 50 tracks.
Competitor service Chartmetric provides TikTok Daily Top Tracks (up to the Top 1000), as well as Weekly Top Tracks and Trending Videos. In comparison, TrendTok’s strength is the price – it is significantly cheaper – and the added ability to look into the top tracks per country. This latter function is possible on Soundcharts, however – and features a bigger selection of territories.
TrendTok has other unique functions, including charts of songs and trends: “Predicted to Rise”, “Trends Predicted to Fall”, “New Trends” and “Trending Now” (for North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa). Careful use of these charts could allow for highly strategic use of sounds in an artist’s videos. Importantly, all of the charts also include ‘Original Sounds’ – those uploaded by users – which are increasingly becoming catalysts for new trends and are difficult to attribute to an artist unless they’re already viral or have the artist name in the title. A simple push notification will let you know if a new song starts gaining traction on TikTok.
The Categories section provides a great sense of what kind of niches have a presence on TikTok. You can click into trending sound lists for a wide array of niches: Beauty Gurus, Comedy, Pets, Dance, Chefs of TikTok, Fashion Icons, Transitions, Home, Sports, YouTubers, Travel, Books, Weddings, Small Business, Gaming, Education, Mental Health, Cosplay, Finance, and Spiritual. It’s interesting to see how some songs pop up across almost all of these categories, while other songs are more specific to a particular niche.
Each list allows users to preview songs in the chart or save them to investigate further. Each song is also clickable, so you can look into further metrics, including graphs detailing the number of views over time, plus stats on number of plays, likes, shares and comments. A world map highlights countries that the song is currently trending in. Users can also click on the song on TikTok, which will direct them to the sound page, helping get a sense of the kind of videos that have been created around it. The graph is especially useful to evaluate the further trajectory of a trend – so that an artist doesn’t jump on a trend that is already losing its momentum or that’s being seen as old news by the TikTok community.
Shah explains that future ambitions for TrendTok include adding hashtag trend tracking too – something we haven’t spotted anywhere else yet. Further personalisation for users is planned, she explains: “Your ‘For You’ is so different from the next person’s, so we are planning to add more breadth to the number of categories, creators and locations.”
One feature Music Ally would love to see is the ability to filter via genres: this would be immensely helpful when working with artists across different genres who seek a trending sound matching their style.
TrendTok offers two usage tiers – a free ‘Basic’ version and a ‘Pro’ version which is heavily discounted at the moment – around $10 for a year. The ‘Basic’ version features just a few albums but the ‘Pro’ version gives access to the personalisation features, and the full inventory and library of trends. The TrendTok team claim that successful YouTubers, e-commerce businesses and various small creators have used the app.
Try TrendTok at forusapps.com
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I LOVE trendTok and use it all the time. I also recommend it in my content creation training. Does it have an affiliate program? I would love to make some cash from recommending it.