We spotted two back-to-back slideshows with 9M views each in early August. That is 18M views in two days:
“I know that feeling when you lie in bed and can’t sleep,” posted at night, then it jumps to a playlist screenshot with a very obvious call to action.
The playlist is now trending and the account sits at 55M views. Most of the other videos copy the same pattern:
Then there is this creator with 168M views who uses “healing” frequency music. The format is not the same vibe as the one above. It is educational content that leads to an artist CTA at the end. Most of the best formats featured below follow this structure. It taps into meditation and healing frequency content. There is a soft CTA at the end: “Try listening to it.”
His top tracks have 69M+ streams.
By quick back-of-the-napkin math from Chat, that is around $240,000 to $400,000 in revenue. Wild. Almost half a million earned by sending TikTok traffic to simple slideshow posts. And the music is “basic”. He published 309 slideshows in two years, which is a strong video/breakout-rate ratio.
Another playlist ran the same playbook and pulled 500M+ plays. That is more than $3M according to Chat. And that really makes you rethink why you’re building a B2B SaaS.
This other one is brilliant. Instead of “sleep” music, he went with “study” music, did 180M views, and now has 400M+ streams. That is only on Spotify. He is also on Apple Music, and he did this in about 1.5 years.
Study focus music is a big niche, and lots of YouTube channels make real money from it. Most of it is lo-fi or “brainwave” music with odd frequencies. The science is not solid, but many say it helps them focus. With that niche in mind, the account owner pulled this smart format trick:
Remember the “my dad’s a Harvard professor” hook? We highlighted it on several StudyTok accounts, and this one turned it into a video with 9M views and a clear call to action to the playlist. What an impressive use of this hook.
Because there is no product, the call to action feels harmless, which makes it easier to funnel people to. I mean, who would think someone is promoting a “spotify playlist” as a way to make millions of dollars. Stealth marketing at its finest.
It could work as a mid-funnel for a StudyTok product by building a semi-branded playlist. We are thinking out loud here, mainly because he nailed many formats we have seen in apps like:
“best study methods” carousels with the playlist near the end, and that video minted another multi-million-view hit.
There are many more formats to explore if you run a quick “spotify playlist” search on TikTok.
Remember the guy who used bots to stream AI music?
Now imagine swapping bots for real TikTok users. Instead of a fake AI jazz band, make lo-fi, binaural, and study playlists with Suno, then drive a flood of slideshow views into streams.
The Suno music part is being heavily worked on at the moment, according to a good friend working in the music industry. The latter TikTok-funneling part is less obvious as of yet.
Really cool growth loop.
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