TikTok’s sonic logo is one of the fastest growing sonic logos in history. Today, that little sound is being heard millions of times a day on apps like Instagram, Reddit and Youtube… but creating it wasn’t easy. To make it, the creative team went through thousands of iterations, executed a covert marketing strategy, and fought through a final debate about a single note. Featuring Roscoe Williamson and Aifric Lennon from MassiveMusic.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

MAXN - Walk Like Your Dreams Could Talk
Layup - WHO’S THAT
andrews’ - Next to Me
SOLD - All of Us
Deja Lou - Swish
SJMR - Heat of the Moment
Deja Lou - Boombox In The Clouds
SPACE CAMP - Never Felt So Good
SOLD - Come And Get It

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View Transcript ▶︎

You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz. I'm Dallas Taylor.

[music in: MAXN - Walk Like Your Dreams Could Talk]

TikTok is the first social media platform that makes me feel... very old.

Now, I do have a TikTok account, but whenever I go on it, I feel a bit like… “Howdy do fellow kids?”

But while I might not be great at [checks notes] The Renegade or The Wednesday Dance, which to be honest, I have no idea what I’m even reading right now… I do know a good sonic brand when I hear it. And TikTok’s sonic brand caught my attention way before the app did.

A while back, I was watching this video on Instagram…

[TikTok Sound Design secrets clip]

When the video ended, the TikTok logo appeared, and I heard this little sound–

[Final Sonic Logo]

TikTok had added a sonic logo to the end of the video. And pretty soon, I started to hear this sound everywhere.

[TikTok montage w/ sonic logo]

That sound made me realize I was already watching plenty of TikTok videos. Just not on TikTok.

[Layup - WHO’S THAT]

Roscoe Williamson: If you're on Reddit, or Instagram, for example, there's loads of TikTok films that you may come across, right?

That's Roscoe Williamson from Massive Music, the company that created…

Roscoe Williamson: And people weren't really attributing this content to TikTok. So their biggest challenge was attribution on other platforms.

Aifric Lennon: Anytime a TikTok is showing up off platform, you're gonna hear it. So as you said, Reddit, Instagram…

And that's Aifric Lennon, who works alongside Roscoe at Massive Music. Today, the sonic logo they created is all over the place.

Aifric Lennon: It's also being rolled out across all of TikTok's marketing, so their TV advertising, radio advertising…

In just over a year, this sound has become one of the most prolific sonic logos ever.

Roscoe Williamson: We think it's over 10 million a week.

[music in: SPACE CAMP - Never Felt So Good]

Around 2020, TikTok was already huge, with over 700 million users. And one of the things that made TikTok so popular was how easy it was to add music to your videos. But for a platform that’s so heavily built around music, they didn’t have a sonic identity.

At the time, Massive Music was already consulting with TikTok. So when TikTok wanted a sonic logo, Aifric and Roscoe knew that they would crush it.

Aifric Lennon: It was actually a six month pitch process. Pretty grueling, I have to say, culminating with the final pitch right after Christmas, so it meant a lot of the team working through the Christmas holidays... But yeah, we were pretty proud of the pitch that we did and, um, we won the project fair and square.

Creating the perfect sound for a giant, global tech company comes with a ton of pressure.

Aifric Lennon: It's super important that you're going to have a sonic logo that really can become an earworm, easily remembered, potentially ever sung or, or hummed.

Roscoe Williamson: Sonic branding has become more and more popular in the last sort of decade, I would say, from smart speakers…

[Alexa activate sound]

Roscoe Williamson: The rise of streaming…

[Netflix Tadum]

Roscoe Williamson: The rise of podcasting.

[Radiolab intro]

Roscoe Williamson: So how do you stand out in amongst an increasingly cluttered sonic landscape?

[music in: andrews’ - Next to Me]

TikTok knew that they had already captured the Gen Z market, but they wanted to broaden their appeal.

Roscoe Williamson: They didn't want to skew too young in terms of how this sonic logo should appeal to people, because at the time there was a big drive to engage older users.

They also wanted this sound to be as joyful and inviting as possible.

Aifric Lennon: In our stakeholder interviews with the brand, somebody described TikTok as “the last sunny corner of the internet.” It's the last place where you can really express that joy and creativity. And so for TikTok, it was really important that the sound expressed this kind welcoming nature and sense of almost safety on the platform.

But of course, there's a fine line between sunny and irritating.

Aifric Lennon: We also needed it to be a sound that could survive a huge amount of exposure and not tire and not become annoying or jarring.

Finally, they wanted a sound that TikTokkers could engage with themselves.

Aifric Lennon: We wanted to create something that could become known, loved and embraced, and even remixed by the community.

To meet all of that criteria, Roscoe and Aifric went through thousands of iterations.

Roscoe Williamson: It's got to be in the two thousand plus…

Aifric Lennon: [laughs]

Early on, they focused on the onomatopoeia of the name TikTok.

Aifric Lennon: It felt natural to think about the sound logo as this kind of two-beat structure.

[Designed Tick Tock track]

Roscoe Williamson: So we did some really early experiments with like looking at what we could use around the house, in the office, everyday objects that might give you that tick tock sound.

Roscoe Williamson: I mean even with your mouth you can kind of go…

Here's an early version.

[Cutting Room logo 1]

…and again.

[Cutting Room logo 1]

Roscoe Williamson: So there's a tick on the front, which is this percussive sound.

[cutting room 1 - first half]

Roscoe Williamson: And on the back… [cutting room 1 - second half] This is where we were going through a phase where we were trying to integrate UGC sounds.

UGC stands for “User Generated Content.” In this case, it was sounds from people's TikTok videos that they cleared for use. To me, this one sounds a bit like someone saying "Owww."

[cutting room 1 - second half]

And that led them to an idea that was even more out there... a logo that would actually change depending on where and when you heard it.

Roscoe Williamson: We did think at one stage of this kind of like ever-evolving sonic logo…

Aifric Lennon: I think we called it “Never The Same Twice.” And it was this idea that, how are we going to define the sound of a brand that's constantly leaning into changing trends and musical trends? And that was why we landed on that.

Each version of the logo would use a different user generated sound.

Roscoe Williamson: But as long as there was a tick and there was a tock, you would always know it's TikTok.

For the initial tick sound, they liked the idea of using a kick drum from the iconic 808 drum machine.

[808 kick]

Roscoe Williamson: It's a homage to a lot of the hip hop music and bass music that became synonymous with the platform early on.

In this Never The Same Twice idea, the 808 would stay fixed.

Roscoe Williamson: But on the back end, you have different UGC sounds coming through and changing.

For instance, maybe something like this:

[montage of 3 potential sonic logos]

Roscoe Williamson: But quite quickly, we realized that we needed something a little bit more um consistent.

Aifric Lennon: What TikTok really needed was something that could really be more of a fixed asset, and become this iconic association with the brand.

So, the idea of a constantly changing logo was cut. But they kept rolling with the 808 kick drum. Here's another early version.

[cutting room logo 3]

Roscoe Williamson: This is a very blown out 808 on the front, and then, sounds like another UGC on the back end, which probably didn't make the cut.

Aifric Lennon: I think it might be like a hyper-processed, uh, UGC dog bark.

Roscoe Williamson: Ahhh, yeah, the dog bark…

Aifric Lennon: From what, yeah, from what I remember [laughs]

If it sounds like they're being a little coy right now, just don’t forget that dog bark.

[cutting room logo 3 second half]

After hundreds of iterations, they started to hone in on something a bit more melodic.

[cutting room logo 2]

Roscoe Williamson: Getting closer. So, you probably recognize the motif, the melody on the back end.

[cutting room logo 2 - second half]

Roscoe Williamson: But it's a different timbre, right? So that sounds like a toy piano timbre. And the front hit, I think that might even be like an 808 reverse. [cutting room logo 3 - first half]

Roscoe Williamson: But for whatever reason, we just don't feel like that had the right cut-through on the front end, and the back end wasn't bright enough. [music in: SOLD - Come And Get It]

Remember, these are only a few of the thousands of sounds that Aifric and Roscoe went through. Each of these examples represents hundreds of slight variations on the same logo.

Roscoe Williamson: There's a point in this process where you're literally going insane, because you know, you're just listening to two second clips of audio and know, your mind is kind of coming out of your ears.

Roscoe Williamson: There was this point, and we're in this sort of pit of despair, like, “Are we ever going to find the right sound?” And then suddenly, it just kind of popped out.

Roscoe Williamson: And it was like everybody on that call from our side was like, “Hey, let's listen to that again.”

[Final sonic logo]

That version featured a monstrous, overblown 808 kick.

[logo 808 stem]

Aifric Lennon: We have the tick, the first beat, which is this iconic sub-bass sound, [logo 808 stem] which for us is a nod to the musicality of the platform.

Roscoe Williamson: But it also functionally acts as a divider between music on content, right? What we found when we were stress testing this, which is when we're putting it at the end of lots of different content with lots of different music, is it really nicely acts as this kind of divider between whatever music precedes it, and then the chord at the end.

[musical TikToks with sonic logo]

After that 808 kick, there's a bright, ascending chord.

[logo melody stem]

This tied back to the idea of the “last sunny corner on the internet.”

Aifric Lennon: The second half of the sound logo, we wanted to instill this sense of joy, which is where this kind of ascending melody came from.

[logo melody stem]

Roscoe Williamson: The timbre of the sound is a layered sine wave... [Emaj7 sine wave] and a marimba… [Emaj7 marimba] layered.

[logo melody stem]

Now, a marimba isn't a shocking choice, because for the past couple of decades, brands have been in love with them.

Roscoe Williamson: We all know the marimba from music in media and commercials. It's very successful, but for good reason, it's warm, it cuts through, right? [Montage: Marimba in products & commercials]

The chord they chose was also very intentional.

Roscoe Williamson: The chord is the E major seventh chord. [Emaj7 Marimba]

A major seven chord is made up of the root, a major third, perfect fifth, and a major seventh.

[Emaj7 Marimba]

Roscoe Williamson: The seventh note, it adds that unusual flavor to the chord. [Emaj7 Marimba] It's kind of used in jazz and R&B and sometimes in hip hop and pop.

[clip: Silk Sonic - Leave The Door Open]

Roscoe Williamson: It just gives that texture to the chord that kind of is a sense of wonder.

[Harp Emaj7 Chord]

Aifric and Roscoe were convinced the E major 7 was the perfect chord. But they got some pushback.

Roscoe Williamson: There was a prominent stakeholder in the project that was like, “It's got to be E major! E major's a bright, happy chord!”

Here’s an E major.

[E marimba]

The difference between these two chords is the fourth note. In the major, that jazzy seventh is swapped out for a higher octave of the root note. Here they are back to back. E Major seven…

[Emaj7 Marimba]

E Major.

[E Marimba]

And here they are in the full logo. E Major seven…

[Final sonic logo]

E Major.

[Sonic logo major]

And again.

[both back to back]

Aifric and Roscoe felt really strongly that the E major seven was the way to go. To prove it, they did some consumer testing that compared the two versions..

Aifric Lennon: We put them into testing in a number of key markets for TikTok, but actually results were really interesting because that resolved E major…[E Marimba] came through as actually a little bit more childish, which is something that TikTok was actively trying to kind of move away from. They wanted to age-up their brand sound.

Aifric Lennon: And so interestingly, the unresolved, so the E major seventh chord... [Emaj7 Marimba] actually came through as more appealing, and more recallable.

In the end, everyone at TikTok was on board.

Aifric Lennon: Having that objective audience data really helped to kind of get it over the line and convince some of the stakeholders.

[Emaj7 Arp Song in]

After thousands of iterations, audience tests, and a final debate about a single note, Aifric and Roscoe finally had their perfect logo. Behind the scenes, they started calling it the Boom-Bling. It was made up of a bass hit, and an ascending chord.

[final sonic logo]

But there’s actually one other sound in there, underneath the chord.

[final logo - second half]

It’s really easy to miss, but here it is on its own.

[final logo UGC stem]

Does that ring any bells?

Roscoe Williamson: It is actually the dog bark.

Yup, that’s the same dog bark from one of the earlier versions.

[final logo UGC stem]

Roscoe Williamson: That is a mistake. That is something that we left in by accident. You know, two thousand logos later, your mind's jelly. And so it was baked in there. And it wasn't till afterwards we were like, “Ooh, that's in there somehow!”

Roscoe Williamson: And then the logo got signed off and, and we were kind of like, “Okay, well, should we take this out?” And then when we took it out, the logo just didn't have the character.

[final logo minus UGC]

So, they left it in.

[final logo]

And that dog bark became the accidental final ingredient.

[music in: SOLD - All of Us]

Finally, TikTok had their sound. So, that’s the end of the story, right? Not even close. Because that logo was just one part of a much larger sonic strategy... A strategy that involved some highly unusual, covert tactics.

Roscoe Williamson: We actually started doing this before the launch of the sonic brand, and we started seeding them onto the platform, kind of like incognito.

That’s coming up, after the break.

MIDROLL

In 2022, Massive Music crafted a sonic logo for TikTok which is now being heard millions of times every day. This logo was just one piece of a larger sonic brand... an entire suite of sounds and music that all gel together. Many of these sounds can be heard in something called the sonic DNA. What you’re hearing now is the main version of it.

Roscoe Williamson: A sonic DNA is a long-form piece of brand music that is essentially the blueprint for different types of branded content.

Roscoe Williamson: Within the sonic DNA there will be chord progressions, melodies, motifs, there will be bits of sound design... So it's an extension of a sonic brand into music.

[“Welcoming” DNA track]

Once they had the main DNA established, they adapted it into different moods and styles that TikTok could use for ads, events, and other kinds of content. For instance, here’s the Welcoming version of the sonic DNA.

And here’s the Chill version.

[“Chill” DNA track]

Roscoe Williamson: We wanted it to sound authentic, remixed, remade, just like the content on the platform.

And here’s the Daring version.

[“Daring” DNA track]

Along with these sonic DNA tracks, they also made a batch of short songs, that were around 10 to 15 seconds each, which they called "sonic stickers." This sticker is named Boom.

The next sticker is called “Whaaaaat!?”

[“Whaaaaat!?” sticker]

And this one is named “Awwww.”

[“Awwww” sticker]

These sonic stickers were added into the library of sounds that TikTokkers could add to their videos.

Roscoe Williamson: But the idea is that we would start to seed them into the platform itself for creators to work with. We actually started doing this before the launch of the sonic brand kind of like incognito.

Aifric Lennon: Yeah, we launched them under an alias, which was Sonic Collective.

In other words, they used these stickers as kind of a Trojan Horse to introduce people to these new, branded sounds.

Roscoe Williamson: And we started to see, like, would people start to create content with them and pick them up?

And sure enough, people did start to pick them up.

[montage of TikToks using sonic stickers]

Then, once the sonic brand launched, they announced that these sonic stickers were actually official TikTok sounds.

Aifric Lennon: And people didn't realize they were already kind of engaging with the sonic identity until it fully launched.

These sonic stickers are still being used today.

[montage of more TikToks using sonic stickers in]

Roscoe Williamson: And I think now, about 30,000 bits of content created using these sonic stickers.

Aifric Lennon: So it's very much a living, breathing, sonic identity.

[music in: Deja Lou - Swish]

Normally, it's tough to get people to actually engage with a sonic brand. So, this sonic sticker thing is pretty brilliant. But the real slam dunk has to be the way that TikTok has used that Boom-Bling sonic logo, and integrated it within the ecosystem of the entire internet.

On TikTok, if the creator allows it, you can download their videos to your phone. And whenever you do, TikTok will automatically add that sonic logo to the end of the video.

The same thing happens when you repost a TikTok video on apps like Instagram or Youtube. So wherever it goes after that, the sonic logo is baked in, so people will know where it came from.

When I hear the Boom-Bling on another app, I feel like I’m consuming TikTok content. It’s almost like TikTok embedded a mini version of their app inside their competitors

[TikTok vid: Planet Earth sounds + sonic logo]

Now, the other social media apps don't have a meaningful sonic logo. Youtube does, but the only time I hear it is when I open Youtube on my television.

[Youtube logo]

But TikTok's strategy has meant that their sound is heard all over the place, especially by people who are not TikTokkers.

After the logo launched, the results of that strategy quickly became clear.

[music in: SJMR - Heat of the Moment]

Aifric Lennon: They did a study about three months post-launch: “How many people could spontaneously recognize the sound without any context of the brand?” And just three months after launch, actually like over 50%, so one in two were able to recognize the sound, which is just pretty astronomical for a new sound logo. Normally, it can take years.

Roscoe Williamson: The TikTok sonic logo is the most rapidly recognized sonic logo of all time. And so for us, we were kind of blown away when we heard that. We were like, “Okay, well, we've done our jobs.”

Looking back, it's hard to believe that TikTok was the first social media platform to add a sonic logo to their videos. It's one of those things that just seems so obvious in hindsight... but that's what happens when you treat sound as both a science and as an art.

Roscoe Williamson: I originally studied chemistry at university and then I got into playing in bands and parents were like, "What are you doing with your life?" And when I found sonic branding, It was a kind of perfect blend of science and art, really.

Aifric Lennon: My background is also scientific, studied biomedical science and then specialized in neuroscience of music and sound. I'm obsessed with understanding how music impacts the mind and behavior. But I've always been a musician, a singer... So sonic branding, it really is that blend of science and art that excites me and gets me up in the morning.

[music in: Deja Lou - Boombox In The Clouds]

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. You can follow Defacto Sound on TikTok at Defacto Sound, and you can find my face over on TikTok telling bite-sized stories about sound at Dallas Taylor dot wav.

Other Voices: This episode was written and produced by Nikolas Harter. It was story edited by Casey Emmerling, and Andrew Anderson, with help from Grace East. It was sound designed and mixed by Brandon Pratt.

Thanks to our guests, Roscoe Williamson and Aifric Lennon. To learn more about their work, visit massive music dot com.

I'm Dallas Taylor. Thanks for listening.