Karma by JoJo Siwa : how TikTok has now become a platform for releasing music

Tiktok ,formally known as musical.ly, was first used primarily by young people to lip sync to songs and dance. 

The recent release of the song Karma by JoJo Siwa shows that the app is now being used as a tool to promote music and build up a platform. 

Jojo Siwa first teased her song on the 12th March 2024 as seen in the video below. Jojo used TikTok to launch her own rebrand with a huge change from her previous pink and bubbly persona. 

Siwa promoted the song as something she wrote herself about her ex-girlfriends however it was discovered that the song was originally recorded in 2012 by a performer called Brit Smith. 

JoJo was getting a lot of hate and questions directed at her. Bad press right? No. Instead the drama helped JoJo to promote her song even further because it led to more people streaming it when it came out, just to see what all the fuss was about. 

Her song now has 6 million streams on spotify after being released on the 5th April. However, what is even more impressive is that in response Brit Smith released her original version which now has 3 million streams, even after the fact that she hasn’t released music since 2013. 

Even though Jojo Siwa already had an established following this method can still be helpful for new artists by giving them new chances to get their names out there.

Overall, from this drama, we see how TikTok is now a platform for promoting and releasing music. JoJo released snippets of audio and dance rehearsals to build up the anticipation of her new song which helped her to increase its popularity.