Culture

TikTok now has its own SiriusXM radio station

Complete with trending songs and cameos from popular TikTok creators.

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TikTok has officially expanded into radio. SiriusXM’s TikTok station is now available for listening, as of noon ET today, in all vehicles and on the SXM app and connected devices.

TikTok Radio is billed as “featuring the trending sounds that are redfining pop culture from TikTok.” Most of the time it’ll just loop the most popular songs on TikTok at any given moment, though weekly shows and occasional specials are planned, too.

Music has always been an integral part of the TikTok experience — so much so, in fact, that viral songs on the app have forced the music industry to completely re-evaluate how it counts streams for charting purposes. Songs created for TikTok have launched musicals and skyrocketed careers. Now an entirely different audience will be exposed to the TikTok trending lifestyle.

Lots going on here — TikTok Radio is very, very TikTok. For the most part, your typical DJ isn’t hosting on TikTok Radio; TikTok creators are. SiriusXM says a “talented and diverse group of TikTok creators” will be hosting, including @8illy, @itscathaley, @hindzsight, @dirrtykingofpop, and @taylorcassidydj. They will, for the most part, play exactly what you’d expect: whatever music is trending on TikTok.

TikTok Radio will also host something called “Creator Invasions,” which sounds like something to be fearful of but is really just guest appearances by big TikTok personalities. Bella Poarch, Dillon Francis, Dixie D’Amelio, Lil Nas X, Normani, and Ed Sheeran are expected to appear on the show at some point, amongst plenty of others.

TikTok for the uninitiated — SiriusXM is still quite popular in the U.S., with a reported total of 34.5 million subscribers during Q1 of this year. The service has about half a million less subscribers now than it did during its peak in 2019. And it still doesn’t come even close to the likes of Spotify, which has around 356 million monthly active users.

Still, the fact that TikTok now has a radio presence at all — a medium typically reserved for very traditional media — is indicative of its immense impact on the music industry. We’d hazard a guess that many of SiriusXM’s subscribers are people who don’t spend much time at all on TikTok. Now they’ll have the chance to be exposed to TikTok’s creators and sounds without ever opening the app.