We caught up with Manchester based musician, Katie Mcdonnell, to discuss her experience with TikTok.
TikTok is no doubt one of the most popular platforms due to its entertaining videos and viral tracks that you can’t stop singing along to such as blinding lights and driver's license, but it is also a great platform for musicians to promote themselves and their music.
If you’ve been a user of the app for a while, you’ll probably remember it was once named ‘Musical.ly’ which featured short lip-sync videos. Now fast forward to 2021, the app still uses music as a way of creating content from singing and dancing, as well many more genres such as prank videos and ‘TikTok challenges.
Katie Mcdonnell is a musician from Stockport, who plays bass and sings vocals in the five-piece indie rock band ‘The One Hundred Club’ who have built up a fanbase since their formation in 2016 and since then have performed across venues in and around Manchester.
In the last year, Katie has kept herself busy without the ability to perform to a live audience or produce music with her band by using TikTok and creating content for her current 10.2k audience. Like many others who make content on the platform, Katie uses trending sounds as well as sharing covers and original songs to promote herself and her music, gaining an impressive total of 47.7K likes.
Katie gave us an insight about the videos she creates and how she utilises TikTok: “I personally use tiktok to cover songs from different genres that I enjoy listening to, or I get involved in trends that i can personalise to base them around the fact that I'm a musician".
“As tiktok is the new hottest social-networking app, it is definitely the best way to market your music to a much wider audience than you can reach through things such as instagram and twitter. TikTok is having a huge effect on the music industry as a whole making it much more accessible for smaller artists to reach a wider audience like Olivia Rodrigo for example. When songs are used for trends, the streams go through to roof giving artists a platform to promote themselves”.
With your rising audience on the app, what advice would you give to other aspiring artists hoping to promote themselves in a similar way?
“Getting started on TikTok can be difficult, but i would suggest hopping on current trends to build your following to then promote yourself and the music you produce”.
Follow Katie's TikTok @kt.mcd_ or listen to her bands music here.