How Sephora Sounds Is Tapping Independent Artists To Help The Beauty Brand Win Consumers on TikTok

The Overview: 

Sephora has launched ‘Sephora Sounds’, a groundbreaking music collective initiative aimed at nurturing and promoting diverse, emerging artists through various social media platforms. This program has incorporated over 55 musical artists since its initiation, with a significant number of BIPOC and female artists, reflecting the diversity of Sephora’s wider community. Sephora Sounds offers both financial support and visibility to artists across a spectrum of backgrounds, working in partnership with SixtyFour Music. Brent Mitchell, the Vice President of Social Media and Influencers at Sephora, highlighted the brand's commitment to fostering inclusivity and providing a platform for a broad range of creative voices saying, “Within the sound-on world of TikTok and social media today, we’re thrilled to be able to feature and amplify a diverse range of musical artists on our social platforms, showcasing the soundtracks that make up the sounds of Sephora – a sound of strength to empower all creators.”

The artists participating in this initiative have the opportunity to feature their music in Sephora’s social media content, enhancing their exposure and contributing to a more inclusive and representative musical landscape.

Understanding The Artist(s) Involved: 

The 55 Sephora Sounds artists hold a formidable total cumulative following of 16,936,445 across platforms including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Spotify. Out of this 16.9 million, a significant 10.7 million followers stemmed from TikTok, a crucial aspect considering the platform is the central battleground for numerous beauty brands today. TikTok’s internal purchase research data supports this, revealing that nearly 70% of TikTok users view the platform as a valuable resource for researching and purchasing beauty products. This is further evidenced by the over 67.7 billion views on #BeautyTok, and the fact that in the first month of the TikTok Shop platform’s launch, nearly 85% of all sales came from the health and beauty category. Beyond functioning as a music and brand campaign, this initiative is clearly a strategic TikTok influencer play, designed to ensure Sephora remains competitive with beauty brands such as e.l.f. Cosmetics, whose brand commitment to TikTok has resulted in 18 consecutive quarters of sales growth and market share expansion. 

Our Key Insights: 

Utilizing Chartmetric data the Beats + Bytes team discovered that: 

• From the onset of the Sephora Sounds announcements on August 1st, the top 5 performing artists that benefited most on Spotify were Kinck, Bronze Avery, Halima, Sharl, and Ark Woods. Collectively, they gained on average 38,612 new monthly listeners 30 days post the announcement. This was slightly higher than the 30,000 number Sephora mentioned in its official press release. 

• Since the introduction of the Sephora Sounds program, there has been a minimal impact on the collective TikTok following of the participating artists. However, with Sephora actively integrating the artists' music into their brand’s TikTok channel and creating native content that features these artists using their products, there is significant potential for the brand's nearly 900,000 TikTok followers to engage with the Sephora Sounds artists. This cross-pollination is anticipated to substantially boost the TikTok following of the artists involved in the program over time. 

• Similar to the minimal impact on the artists' TikTok channels observed with the introduction of Sephora Sounds, the majority of artists have experienced little to no increase in their YouTube subscribers. However, Alli Fitz stands out as an exception, having witnessed a substantial increase of 1,000 subscribers since the program’s announcement. Just as with TikTok, we expect that the artists’ visibility and engagement would significantly increase if Sephora were to feature the collective’s songs or share the artists’ content on their YouTube channel, which has a substantial following of 1.39 million subscribers. Such exposure would likely result in both an increase in consumption of the artists’ music catalogs and a noticeable growth in their YouTube subscriber base.

At the time this document was prepared, Sephora has shared four TikTok posts that either feature an artist from the Sephora Sounds collective or incorporate music from one of the artists in their TikTok content. Despite the campaign being in its initial stages, the hashtag #SephoraSounds has already amassed 2.5 million views. With the views growing by the week, the Beats + Bytes team analyzed how these TikTok posts impacted the respective 2023 release(s) of the featured artists. Here is what we uncovered:  

• Post Sephora sharing a TikTok that introduced the artist SuperKnova, his streams across all his 2023 releases on Spotify over the next two weeks jumped by 2,601.

• Post Sephora sharing a TikTok that introduced the artist Precious, her streams across all his 2023 releases on Spotify over the next two weeks jumped by 1,984.

The Takeaway: 

The Sephora Sounds campaign, at first glance, appears to be a foray into music marketing, but a closer look reveals it as a sophisticated TikTok influencer initiative that leverages the allure of music to amplify Sephora's brand presence on a platform where top beauty contenders jostle for dominance. It underscores the platform's dependence on sound as a key factor for user engagement, yet it also brings to light the hurdles brands face with the limited TikTok sounds library and the intricate web of obtaining sync licenses. The legal predicament encountered by Bang Energy, entangled in a lawsuit by Universal Music Group for the unlicensed use of tracks from renowned artists like Justin Bieber and Mariah Carey, accentuates the potential pitfalls of such strategies. Despite these challenges, the importance of sound on TikTok cannot be overstated, with 88% of its users considering it crucial and audio-rich ads showing a significant uptick in both user engagement and brand favorability—paralleling the industry’s sync revenue jump of 25% from H1 2022 to H1 2023. So, here are our key takeaways brand marketers should leave with after examining the Sephora Sounds campaign: 

• The Growing Power Of The Emerging Artist in Influencer Marketing: Brands in the beauty sector are discovering the undervalued opportunities that emerging artists and micro-influencers offer. This shift towards leveraging a cadre of smaller-scale influencers, rather than investing in a single high-profile figure, allows for a more nuanced and expansive engagement strategy. These artists, often with a dedicated early fanbase, present a fertile ground for authentic connections, with their followers taking great pride in their growth—a trait especially resonant in the beauty industry's push for authenticity. HubSpot's insights affirm that micro-influencers command up to 60% more engagement compared to their more populous peers, and they have become the preferred choice for 56% of marketers. Moreover, with over 80% of marketers earmarking budgets for influencer marketing in 2023, and with a significant tilt towards nano and micro-influencers, it's evident that the market is recalibrating its value perception, recognizing the substantial, yet previously underestimated, impact of these emerging voices in driving brand narratives and consumer engagement.

• Clearable Music is a Commodity: Brands like Sephora, which harness independent artists for their campaigns, aren't merely securing a cost-effective sync license; they are forging partnerships with creators who bring along a dedicated fanbase of passionate early adopters. These fans are eager to support their favorite artists in new endeavors, amplifying the brand's message through a form of grassroots promotion that can outperform traditional advertising. Moreover, the typical music licensing process can be a labyrinthine task for brands, often involving negotiations for each individual track. By striking deals with over 55 independent artists simultaneously, Sephora sidesteps this complexity, amassing a diverse library of new songs ready to complement any style of content on their TikTok page. This strategic move not only streamlines content creation but ensures a steady flow of fresh, resonant music that can adapt to their marketing needs well into the future.

• Music Campaigns Can Move Frictionlessly Across Platforms: The 'Sephora Sounds' initiative demonstrates the fluidity with which a well-crafted music campaign can traverse various social media platforms, be it YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram, where each has its intrinsic link to music. This musical thread enabled Sephora to broaden a campaign's reach, initially rooted in music marketing, into a broader TikTok influencer movement. As the strategy unfolds, there is potential for Sephora to replicate this success on YouTube and Instagram, positioning 'Sephora Sounds' as the hallmark audio identity for their community of beauty enthusiasts. 

Editor's Note: Research assisted by Soleill Eugeni, Associate at CAD Management LLC.