Since the app exploded in the United States around the same time COVID-19 hit the country in 2020, TikTok’s influence on the music industry has only continued to increase. With its dance trends and seamless ability to include viral songs in any video, TikTok has helped introduce many new artists to the world, and has bolstered the popularity of hundreds of musicians in genres like pop, hip-hop, R&B, rock, and more.
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Further validating this impact, Billboard has now given TikTok its own chart designation. Announced on Thursday (September 14), the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart is “a new weekly chart that will track the most popular songs on the platform in the U.S.,” according to Billboard.
“TikTok is already the world’s most powerful platform for music discovery and promotion, and each week our passionate community of music fans drives songs onto the Billboard charts,” Ole Obermann, the global head of music business development at TikTok said in a statement. “It therefore made perfect sense to partner with Billboard to create the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart. The chart gives a clear picture of the music that is being listened to on TikTok, and consequently starting to trend on DSPs and other services.”
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Per Billboard, the chart is put together “based on a combination of creations, video views, and user engagement by the U.S. TikTok community,” and is the first chart to “monitor the popularity of music on the video-sharing platform.”
Simultaneously with this announcement, Billboard published the first ever TikTok Top 50 chart, which saw surging, provocative St. Louis native Sexyy Red’s song “SkeeYee” come in at No. 1. Used as a sound in over 361,000 different videos on TikTok, “SkeeYee” has been continuously growing in acclaim since its June release, as it made its first appearance on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart this week at No. 67.
Other songs that cracked the top 10 of the TikTok Top 50 chart include Doja Cat’s “Paint The Town Red,” Taylor Swift’s “August,” and Ice Spice’s “Deli.” Check out the full chart here.
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