The short-video platform is again behind the creation of a hit song. TikTok is changing the music industry, how hits are made and how the platform opens a new way to discover new artists and new music.

TikTok再次成为热门歌曲创作的幕后助推者，通过展示创作热门歌曲以及开辟有关发掘新秀达人和新音乐的途径，TikTok正在掀起音乐行业变革浪潮。

At the heart of the phenomenon are viral challenges or trends, in which creators use short clips from a song that are re-used by thousands or millions of other users in their videos.

这一现象的主要表现为爆红挑战赛或流行活动，具体方式是创作者采用成千上万的其他用户在其各自视频中重复使用的歌曲来剪辑短片。

While TikTok videos do not count towards the Billboard charts, activity on the platform directly drives music consumption on streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. Over 175 songs that trended on TikTok in 2021 charted on the Billboard Hot 100, twice as many the year before.

虽然TikTok视频未被计入美国《公告牌》（Billboard）排行榜，但这一平台上的活动直接推动了 Spotify和Apple Music等流媒体平台上的音乐消费。2021年，超过 175 首TikTok热门歌曲登上了《公告牌》百强单曲榜，其数量是去年上榜歌曲数量的两倍。

But how do trends, challenges, and memes make hits? The answer lies in how music has become creative material for social storytelling on TikTok, and how storytelling works when videos are only a few seconds short. Social storytelling with music.

但这些流行活动、挑战赛和表情包为何走红？音乐已成为TikTok用户讲述社交故事的创意素材，而且这种讲故事的方式在时长仅为几秒钟的短视频中极有成效。简言之：利用音乐讲社交故事。

Tom van Laer, associate professor of narratology at The University of Sydney Business School, explains what makes for good storytelling:

悉尼大学商学院叙事学副教授汤姆·范·拉尔（Tom van Laer）阐述了怎样才能讲好故事：

For a good story, you need three things. A story has a plot and a character… That’s the minimum for a story. For a good story you need a third thing, which is a dramatic curve.

好的故事需要具备三大要素。首先，故事需要有情节和人物……这是故事的最基本要素。而好故事还需要具备第三个要素，即一条戏剧性弧线。

And this is where the music comes into play. When a challenge or trend emerges on TikTok, it always features the same clip from a particular song, which serves as a common story element across all those videos. As van Laer explains:

音乐刚好能满足这些条件。TikTok上所出现的挑战活动总是包含摘自特定歌曲的相同剪辑片段，这是所有这些视频的共同故事元素。正如范·拉尔所述：

What you then get is a certain cultural capital or cultural knowledge that is already there. So then every new iteration is just added to that. And if you’re on the inside, if you in the know, then that is still something you could easily follow because you see the one video of 15 seconds only as another event in the bigger story.

你会获得某种现有文化资本或文化知识，而每一次新的阐述，都会为故事带来新元素。如果你是该音乐的局内人，那么你仍然可以轻松理解该故事，因为你可以将时长为15 秒的短视频视为一个宏大故事中的小小后续。

Because the clip is instantly recognisable by the audience it ties together all the videos that make up a TikTok challenge or trend. It acts as the meta-narrative that allows each creator to contribute their own interpretation of the story.

观众之所以能够即时识别某一音乐剪辑片段，是因为它融合了所有TikTok挑战中所出现的视频。它充当的是元叙事的角色，是一种能让每位创作者都可以展示自己故事的演绎方法。

This can take the form of imitations, such as in the “Jamie Big” trend, based on a original video that has been viewed more than 200 million times. It shows a man dancing to Nelly Furtado’s Say It Right in front of his bathroom mirror.

创作者可以采取模仿的形式，例如“Jamie Big”挑战改编自播放量超过 2 亿次的原创视频。其中展示了一个男人在浴室镜子前跟着加拿大歌手妮莉·费塔朵（Nelly Furtado）所唱的《Say It Right》的节奏跳舞。

Thousands of videos have since imitated the original, whereby a creator always films themselves in front of their bathroom mirror, switching to the original video on the beat change of the song.

随后，成千上万的视频模仿了这段原创视频，具体方式是创作者在浴室镜子前进行自拍，并随着歌曲的节奏变化将视频画面切换至原版视频。

Other trends work by offering different interpretations of the same story line. A good example is the “Things that just make sense…” trend, set to Che la luna, a version of a classic Sicilian folk song. In this video contributors film themselves showcasing the features of a particular location, each doing the same characteristic hand gestures.

其它挑战活动则对同一故事情节提供不同的演绎。一个例子是“有意义的事情……”挑战活动，其背景音乐为经典的西西里民歌《Che la luna》。在这段视频中，各参与者在进行自拍时展示特定位置的特征，且每个人都做着相同的典型手势。

Because the audience always recognises the characteristic song, they are instantly familiar with the story’s plot; they know what to expect and can thus simply enjoy each interpretation of the theme. The music provides the glue that holds together a social story, collectively told across many videos.

观众能够听出那首极具特色的歌曲就是《Che la luna》，他们对故事的情节烂熟于心；他们知道会发生什么情况，因此可以简单地享受对同一主题的每一种演绎。音乐充当了将社交故事融为一体的粘合剂，即诸多视频讲述同一个故事。

A challenge or trend is thus a form of social storytelling, with the music acting like shorthand to provide the context for all the videos.

因此，挑战活动是一种社交叙事形式，而音乐就像速记法一样为所有视频提供背景。

We Don’t Talk About Bruno has provided material for a number of different trends, each driving its popularity. And besides the many Encanto fan edits featuring parts of the song, there is a particular clip with a catchy hook that underpins a story-line in which creators try to do a task in the first take of the video and after the beat change reveal why the task is so difficult. This features dance moves from the Encanto movie.

《我们不聊布鲁诺》为许多不同的挑战活动提供素材，同时每一类挑战活动又推动这首歌的热度上涨。除了《魔法满屋》的粉丝对歌曲的精彩部分进行剪辑外，这首歌还有一个吸引人的特殊剪辑片段也能深入推进一个故事情节。在该情节中，创作者试图在第一次拍摄视频时完成某项任务，然后在歌曲节奏发生变化后揭示这项任务如此艰巨的原因，其亮点是电影《魔法满屋》中的舞蹈动作。

To understand what makes TikTok such a powerful platform for the music industry, we must “unlearn” music as something we just listen to. On digital platforms like TikTok music is rapidly becoming a material for creating, for self-expression, for storytelling.

为了理解导致TikTok 对音乐行业产生强大影响力的背后根源，我们必须“摆脱”音乐只是用来聆听的固有观念。在TikTok等数字平台上，音乐正迅速成为创作、自我表达和讲故事的素材。

Virality is then a by-product of the use of music as creative material for collective storytelling – one that provides the canvas, or meta-narrative, for each creator’s interpretation of the emerging story-line.

爆红现象只是使用音乐作为集体讲故事的创意素材后所带来的结果，即音乐为每位创作者提供其演绎新兴故事情节所需的总体背景或元叙事。

With the most popular songs sometimes exceeding 20 billion views on videos they soundtrack, the scale of the phenomenon gives the platform its transformative role for the music industry.

一旦最受欢迎的歌曲成为TikTok上视频的配乐，该视频的观看次数高则超过 200 亿次，这样的规模让这一平台为音乐行业带来变革。