TikTok and Triller Take Over as Hip-Hop’s Newest Breeding Ground
From Facebook to YouTube, Instagram to Snapchat, social media and the advancements of the internet have changed the landscape of music, but no recent video apps have made waves in discovering new music and artists quite like TikTok or Triller.
Founded in 2017, TikTok got its start as a short-form video app and social network. A year later, the app merged with musical.ly, a similar platform that focused on lip-syncing videos. The company's active users in the U.S. total 26.5 million monthly. Triller, TikTok's competitor, just caught up with 26.5 million monthly users of its own in the U.S. The company, which began in 2015, recently received more than $10 million in investments from rappers Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne, Young Thug, Kendrick Lamar, Tyga and T.I., among others.
Triller and TikTok have structural similarities and some slight differences: one of which being the number of rappers that have taken to their apps. While both apps have seen rappers promoting their music with choreographed or comical videos, Triller has yet to receive the response that TikTok has experienced. Since TikTok was founded, artists like Lil Nas X launched their music careers off the strength of good music and 500 million users worldwide. Thanks to TikTok, "Old Town Road" was introduced to the masses and charted on both the rap and country Billboard charts as a result.
Though Doja Cat was already an established artist, 2019 has proved to be her biggest year yet, with a little help from TikTok. She reaped the benefits of the app's users after she gained more than four million videos that were made to her track "Candy." Her newest single, "Juicy" featuring Tyga, also received some virtual love, garnering a smaller buzz on the app.
Well-known artists like Chance The Rapper, Swae Lee and Moneybagg Yo have all taken their music to Triller as a means of promoting their songs. While developing California rappers Ambjaay and 24kGoldn have used TikTok to help their music gain traction and reach new heights.
Triller helped spell success for Calboy, when the 20-year-old Chicago rapper got a boost in both 2018 and into 2019 after his hit song, "Envy Me," became the subject of the #EnvyMeChallenge. With the buzz created from all the Triller videos and its streaming success, "Envy Me" landed on Billboard Hot 100 chart, officially giving the rapper his first-charting single.
Though Triller has yet to launch a rapper's career quite like that of Lil Nas X, the streaming numbers and their growing fan base has proved them to be worthy competition for TikTok.
Which app do you think is better? Check out XXL's deep dive into Triller and TikTok below.
See 15 of Hip-Hop's Weirdest Album Titles