TikTok has been aggressively advertising on Snap and Insta for years now. It's very obviously a non-sustainable business model. The whole point of viral growth is that you don't need advertising. I'm sure there's going to be a massively profitable "MySpace for gen-Z or Vine 2.0" coming out soon (does anyone want to build it?), but TikTok ain't it.
How is it non-sustainable, it's booting up. It's not like they keep paying for every time their users use it. It's already viral, folks are now talking about it. I keep seeing TikTok videos on twitter posted/retweeted by users not ads. Hell, I installed it and I never did install Snapchat.
Maybe unsustainable in the traditional sense, but if they can negotiate contracts with the talent on their platform, that may be a different avenue for profitability.
I mean look at the success of Lil Nas X. Highly successful TikTok talent.
I'd argue that Lil Nas X had success in spite of TikTok, not because of it. His single was amazing -- just fantastic content all around. 180+ million hits on YouTube doesn't lie. He would've blown up regardless of platform.
Music video seems to have a massive increase in view numbers over any other kind of video category. I question how valid the view numbers are! There must be a lot of computers/tv's left on playing music in burger kings or airports.
