If your TikTok page is anything like mine right now, you can’t scroll through more than a video or two without coming across Taylor Swift content. TikTok encourages engagement with the world’s biggest singer-songwriter through its interactive in-app fan experience, launching in March 2023.
As Swift prepares to play the first of her eight sold-out Eras Tour concerts at London’s Wembley Stadium this week, TikTok is launching the next phase of its fan experience. The social media platform is encouraging Swifties to complete weekly challenges over the next 11 weeks (one for each of Swift’s albums), all of which will earn them themed profile frames and beads to make their own digital friendship bracelets.
As a video-based platform, TikTok has proven itself an important place for people to engage in music both new and old. For young artists breaking through, it’s an opportunity to connect with a new audience, while for more established musicians like Swift, TikTok is a forum to meet her fans where they are. Fan experiences like the one TikTok created with Swift are designed to help fans reach even deeper than just watching the 5 million Eras Tour-related videos on the platform.
Things haven’t exactly gone smoothly for TikTok on the music front this year, after it failed to reach a deal with Swift’s record label, Universal Music Group. In this debacle, UMG artists’ songs were removed from the platform in just three months return in May. Swift was the first UMG artist to return to TikTok with the release of her new album The Tortured Poets Department in April.
Other new features that TikTok is adding to its Taylor Swift fan experience include video highlights from each tour stop and a playlist related to the theme of each weekly album. To access the experience, fans can click on the anchor that appears next to Taylor Swift’s TikTok content or interact with the search banners that appear for related Eras Tour search terms.
