Every song has a story, but does everyone want to hear it? Maybe not, especially if they have to listen to your explanation before deciding whether they like the song.
Still, music marketing influencers insist on using hooks to draw your audience in to listen to your song. One creator I've seen even sells a kit with over 200 hooks you can use on your next TikTok!
But what is a hook? In the context of a TikTok video, a hook is a short introductory gimmick that is supposed to make the song more meaningful to the listener. Where the song doesn't hold the listener's attention, their anticipation for what was promised in the hook is supposed to.
3 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Start Your TikToks with a Hook
I have a hard time believing that hooks work for music on TikTok, mostly because I find my videos where I have literally anything introductory before the lyrics don't do as well.
While you are working to try to make people artificially connect to your song by tying a story to it, your listeners are trying to avoid wasting their time. Unlike other social media, unseen and more interesting content exists with the literal swipe of a finger.
In the attention economy of TikTok, time is precious. Your content should be crafted so viewers have to wait as little as possible to get to the good part. Here are three reasons why hooks are probably hurting your numbers.
1. People Will Skip Before Hearing Your Song
People scrolling TikTok expect instant entertainment. There are literally trillions of videos on TikTok, so there is no point waiting through some boring monologue that promises a song is coming.
When you start your video with a hook, you only give your audience an opportunity to skip your video before they ever hear your song. If the story and emotion doesn't come through listening to your song on its own, people aren't going to connect with those elements just because you insist they exist.
2. New Listeners Don't Trust You
This leads to the next problem with TikTok hooks: there's a credibility gap. Listeners who have never heard of you or your music before have no reason to trust what you are saying.
People don't respond to promises of entertainment; they respond to entertainment. No matter how attention grabbing you think your hook is, it isn't entertaining. And if it is entertaining, you may become known for your hook instead of your music.
3. People Hate Marketing Gimmicks
And there's not even a guarantee that your hook will even hold your audience's attention, especially if you're picking it from someone else's catalog. People can generally tell when they're being marketed to, and most people don't like it.
There are a few ways your hook can feel gimmicky. First, if someone sees the same hook used by another artist, they'll see you as unoriginal. If it sounds like you're reading your hook from a script, they'll see you as inauthentic. Obviously this works against you as an original artist.
5 Things You Should Be Doing Instead
Okay fine, hooks have to go. But then the question remains: What can you do to get listeners from TikTok?
There are a few very simple practices that you can easily apply to every song you want to promote. All of your practices should keep in mind a few principles:
Don't make people wait
Make it easy to understand
Get a second watch
1. Put Your Hook in the Description
Do you have something that you absolutely must let your listener know about your song? Put it in the description or in a text sticker.
The advantage of relegating your hook to text is people can read your hook while your song is playing. They don't have to wait, and they can read it at their own pace.
Further, if the thing you're talking about in your hook comes early in the video, people might watch again more studiously to catch it.
2. Choose a Compelling Clip
While you may want to occasionally want to post videos of full songs as a bonus for your fans, new listeners are more likely to respond to shorter clips that leave them wanting more. Further, shorter videos are more likely to be played all the way through and repeated.
Your clip should demonstrate why the song is worth listening to. Is it a particular stanza in your lyrics? Is it a killer guitar solo? Is it a seamless time signature change? Figure out what makes your song interesting and choose a clip that puts it front and center.
Also choose visual matter that is engaging. I find that videos of live performances in front of an engaged audience do the best, and you can probably imagine the reasons why. Don't have any upcoming gigs to film? Go to an open mic and perform there. (It's also a great place to find opportunities for gigs.)
3. Start at the Lyrics or Melody
Don't make your audience wait through an intro riff to get to the good part. Start at the good part whether that be the lyrics or the start of a solo.
You know what makes your song captivating. Capture your audience's attention right away by coming with it right out of the gate. Remember, new listeners have no reason to trust you when you say, "Wait till the end."
4. Make It Loop
The easiest way to get repeat views on your video is to make it unclear where it ends. With music this is especially easy to do since most music contains repeating elements anyway.
I find the easiest thing to do is take a verse-chorus pair and cut it so it starts precisely at the beginning of the lyrics and ends precisely before the beginning of the following verse. (If you have a killer chorus, you might want to start with that.)
Some of your songs will work better as loops than others. Look through your catalog, and pick out the songs that are episodic where each verse tells a story on its own. I find these songs make the most viral loops.
5. Caption Your Video
It's really not that time consuming. You already know the words to your song, all you have to do is find where they start and end. Now that's out of the way, let's talk about why.
First, not everyone is going to be able to hear what you're saying. Some people are hard of hearing. Some people open TikTok on mute (like me). Some people just suck at hearing lyrics. If your lyrics are the thing to listen to, you need to give your audience every opportunity you can to understand them.
The second reason ties into the first. All digital platforms are constantly seeking to make their user experience more accessible. Thus, if your content is more accessible, TikTok will privilege it in their algorithm. Given that TikTok limits the number of text stickers you can use, shorter clips are better to post because you can caption them better.
How to Get More TikTok Tips
TikTok is quickly becoming the primary way musicians find new listeners. If you want more tips for marketing your music on TikTok, keep up with the Jester of No Court blog by subscribing to my newsletter below.