Make Your Next Song Go Viral

NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” has gone bonkers on the internet.

It has grown its volume of listens by 800% and is on The Billboard Top 100 charts.

NSYNC’s Spotify hits increased by 72%

No cookies for guessing why

Here’s the sauce though: Out of ALL the crazy marketing stints Ryan Reynolds pulled for the promotion of Deadpool x Wolverine, this was not in it.

The song and Ryan’s dance sequence went more viral than the absurd Wolverine popcorn bucket.

With over 375k reels made on the hit song since, it’s like someone’s brought back the dinosaurs to life.

And it got me thinking - what made it go viral in the first place? And why can’t others replicate it?

Because believe me, a lot of people have tried. 

Case in point: Dua Lipa’s Houdini

A lot of effort went into promoting Dua’s latest single “Houdini“ - not to much avail though.

Tried a lot to get people to generate content on Houdini to promote the song. Didn’t work out.

The song did good, but not great.

On the other hand, you take a local artist from Chennai, Paal Dabba - his recent single “Kaathu Mela” has amassed over 1M reels. On Instagram Alone.

But believe it or not, there’s a method to this madness.

I’ve talked to the people who contributed to Paal Dabba’s song’s virality, and it is no luck. There’s a reason Paal Dabba’s song won and Dua Lipa (who has a comparatively WAAYYYYY bigger fan base and reach)

So what makes a song “viral“? Let’s find out

First, let’s take the elements of a hit song, from a marketing perspective.

Whether it’s NSYNC, Dua Lipa, or Paal Dabba and Hanumankind, all successful songs have:

• A great 15-20 second hook

• Easy to recall

• Engage the fans

While artists shouldn’t be looking into this when creating art, it is definitely something that moves the needle in a BIG way.

So, let’s compare these elements of a hit song with what made NSYNC’s song come back to life, and then why Dua’s couldn’t catch a break.

Bye Bye Bye:

• 20-second hook ✅

• Easy recall (super hit song 20 years ago, still catchy and relevant) ✅

• Engage the fans (Deadpool’s dance sequence got everyone else to try it too) ✅

Houdini:

• 20-second hook ✅

• Easy recall (not really effective, but yes, you could give her credit for this)✅

• Engage the fans (Needs a lot more creative juice to actually get the song and the creative to play perfectly) ❌

Play this across every popular song on social and you’ll see it tracks.

If you can meet these three criteria, you’ve got a hit song at your fingertips.

Well, not so easy. That third point - Engaging your fans - is easier said than done. Hundreds of thousands of attempts have been made from marketing teams to get that to play out (that Wolverine bucket thing? Hillarious, but not very effective)

Here’s a simple hack to get across that bridge:

Get influencer campaigns running. 

Paal Dabba’s Think Music executed this really well. They got over a hundred of these influencers, micro and macro, to recreate the music, to the point where it becomes commonplace.

Influencers recreate a simple dance sequence. It’s catchy, people start chipping in, recreate the reels for themselves. It starts snowballing.

After that, you just sit back and watch the dominoes fall. One million reels on the song and a dozen tour deals signed on later, you get on with your next marketing campaign.

Now, I am super opposed to artists creating music just for the hits. That’s not music, that’s just prostitution.

BUT, creating something awesome and then marketing it right? Every artist deserves that.