Amapiano, a proudly South African genre, is blowing up TikTok streets.
#Amapiano has reached over 73 million views on the app – the world’s leading destination for short-form video.
The most popular artists are DJ Maphorisa, Kabza De Small, DJ Sumbody and Moonchild Sanelly.
Boniswa Sidwaba, TikTok content operations manager for Africa, says songs like Phoyisa with Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa has gained massive traction with the track amassing 12.9 million views and counting.
“Other Amapiano songs doing well on the platform include Lorch, Emcimbini, Love You Tonight, Nana Thula and Indaba Kabani. Music has always been a special part of TikTok’s creative DNA and remains a vehicle for songs and emerging artists to gain exposure and reach a wide and varied audience,” she says.
“To promote Amapiano specifically, TikTok has a dedicated in-app Amapiano playlist within the sounds page that features new and popular Amapiano music. Most recently, we also launched the TikTok Amapiano page on the discover tab which features popular Amapiano music, artists and an interactive in-app game created to challenge TikTok creators to guess the Amapiano song playing,” she added.
Another upcoming artist bowing up the app is Durbanite, DJ Jashmir, who recently debuted his Amapiano remix of the iPhone ringtone.
This resulted in the #AmaiPhone challenge which currently has over six million views on the app.
Another song titled “I Don’t Know”, by upcoming Amapiano artist Xavier, went viral all over the world with the #idontknowifiknow challenge which currently sits at 8.4million views. The song had TikTok users create funny memes to the song’s line “I don’t know if I know but I think I know I don’t know”.
“When a song trends on TikTok, there is a direct correlation with the song doing well on other streaming charts on other platforms. It is safe to say that TikTok is changing the general music industry in Africa, and all over the world,” says Sidwaba.
