Historically, the music industry has been hard to break into. World-class writers only pitching to A-List talent resulted in a small pool of chart-topping artists.

TikTok has revolutionised music discovery and driven real-world impact. In 2022, 13 of 14 Hot 100 #1s were driven by significant TikTok trends.

StemDrop, TikTok’s music incubator, gives new talent access to the best songs, which, with the help of Samsung’s technology, they can make their own.

Over the two month campaign, StemDrop created thousands of song versions across the globe, spanning multiple genres, breaking new talent and shifting Samsung’s brand perception in the process.

StemDrop is a new music talent search program which marries the discovery power of TikTok with the creative expression enabled by Samsung's mobile technology.

A music incubator, StemDrop001 gave new artists the chance to co-create a hit with superproducer Max Martin and his multiple Grammy-winning team.

The stems of the producers' next hit ‘Red Lights’ were released exclusively on TikTok, for any artist to create their own version, watched by IP owners SyCo and UMG, and overseen by Republic.

Samsung wanted to reach a Gen Z audience with the goal of increasing brand desirability, awareness and consideration of their innovative Z Flip4 smartphone and Buds 2Pro wireless headphones. TikTok has a core Gen Z audience and is known for music and artist discovery.

The brand identified music as the audience’s number of passion point and needed an authentic way to show how the products’ technological innovations aided their creative expression

Samsung's research found that 1 in 3 Brits dream of being a TikTok music star but lacked the inspiration to make it big.

This led to the strategy of “Make It with Samsung”, where Samsung products enabled creative expression and unleashed the power of music making.

StemDrop is a UMG & SyCo format exclusively on TikTok which releases a new song from renowned talent giving Creators a chance to make their own version.

StemDrop shows how Samsung’s technology aids this creation - with select artists demonstrating this on products whilst making their own entry and kickstarting mass creation.

We dropped the stems on TikTok for everyone to remix with our global first of a Music Maker Branded Effect, designed using Samsung’s UI.

In December, five creators were selected to perform their versions of Red Lights at a special live event at Samsung KX, which was streamed to the TikTok community with Jaden Smith & Simon Cowell in attendance.

Their versions have been released on TikTok for the community to get creative with and have amassed over 227,000 video creations at the time of writing. The four artists have plans for official releases in 2023 through UMG.

Introduced via a far-reaching PR campaign, StemDrop was launched on platform through Creator-led content in late October. The creative was promoted by Samsung’s in-feed advertising and supported by on-platform levers such as a StemDrop channel, banners and notifications. The communication centred around the announcements, education and content curation of entries.

Across the two month campaign, the Community could learn about the format on the dedicated hub which highlighted entries, linked to creation tools and displayed Samsung product features.

The Creation could be done off-platform- with song components (aka.stems) downloaded via the microsite, or on-platform through a world-first Samsung branded music mixer effect. All content was grouped under #StemDrop001.

In December, UMG invited 5 Entrants to professionally mix their songs, which were then performed live at an event streamed from the Samsung KX store, hosted by Jaden Smith and attended by Simon Cowell.

4 of these songs went viral.

Brand:

+10% increase in brand consideration on the Samsung SD tracker (exceeding target by +8%)

+7% increase in Product Awareness (+2% over target)

+6% Increase in Brand Love (+4% over target)

Reach:

3.9bn PR value

28M Views of Live Show

20.3 Billion Hashtag Views

Engagement:

227k videos created within 14 days of release

78.7 seconds average dwell time across EU5 on the StemDrop Mixer

580% increase in search for 'Samsung' on TikTok for three week period post launch

1.4x higher than average dwell time in EU on hub

+83% higher creator engagement rate on average across all SD Creator activity vs Samsung 2022 creator benchmarks