TikTok Billboard Top 50
The TikTok Billboard Top 50 is a chart published weekly by Billboard in the United States. It ranks the most popular songs on the social media platform TikTok in the United States based on a combination of total creations, video views and user engagement on the platform.[1][2][3] The chart premiered on September 14, 2023, with the song "SkeeYee" by American rapper Sexyy Red at number one.[4]
Background[edit]
The video-sharing platform TikTok gained global popularity in the year 2019, and surpassed 2 billion mobile downloads worldwide in October 2020.[5][6] TikTok has allowed many music artists to gain a wider audience, and has spawned several viral hit songs.[7][8][9] Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the platform has also launched many songs that failed to garner initial commercial success into sleeper hits.[10][11] One of the first examples of this phenomenon is the song "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X, which started as a meme on TikTok, and became one of the biggest songs of 2019 and the longest-running number-one song in the history of the US Billboard Hot 100.[12][7][13] A more recent example being 2023's "Paint the Town Red" by Doja Cat, which also topped the US Billboard Hot 100 after going viral on TikTok and became a worldwide hit.[14] A study by MRC Data found in July 2021 that 67% of TikTok users are estimated to be more likely to look up songs on digital streaming platforms after hearing them on TikTok.[15] While launching the chart, Billboard described TikTok as "the world’s most powerful platform for music discovery and promotion".[1]