TikTok Testing Album Pre-Saves: Report

TikTok is reportedly testing a feature that allows fans to pre-save upcoming albums so they will be automatically added to users’ music libraries on Spotify or Apple Music once they’re released.

The news of the test was first reported by Music Ally. A rep for the platform declined to comment.

Pushing for pre-saves has been a key component of marketing music on TikTok for years. Artists urge their fans not to just watch and comment on their latest videos, but to take the extra step of clicking a link, logging into their streaming service of choice and pre-saving a track so it will be added to their personal libraries when it comes out. The pre-save links used by artists are typically created by third-party companies like Linkfire and Feature.FM.

Completing a pre-save is not a passive activity; since it takes extra work from fans, it has often been viewed in the music industry as a crucial sign of their commitment — and an important predictor of future streams. If an artist teases a song on TikTok and it doesn’t get many pre-saves, they may not even bother to officially release it.

“The industry has been obsessed with [pre-saves] because of all the recent examples of success people are having” when they run these campaigns, Connor Lawrence, co-founder of indify, said in 2022. “It’s the ability [of pre-saves] to capture and convert attention into fandom — and dollars via streaming revenue — that’s caused the obsession” with them.

Artists like Lauren Spencer-Smith and David Kushner racked up eye-popping pre-save totals that were noticed around the industry in 2021 and 2022. Kushner, for example, earned 146,000 pre-saves before the release of “Miserable Man” and more than 137,000 before the release of “Mr. Forgettable,” according to Rolling Stone.

Spotify added its own pre-save feature in 2023. During its 2023 Stream On event, the company said that over 80% of pre-savers stream a song within its debut week.

It makes sense that TikTok would eventually try to provide artists with a similar pre-save capability. It also fits with TikTok’s recent emphasis on its “Add to Music App,” which enables users to save a track they discover on the platform to their preferred streaming service with relative ease.

In October, Instagram rolled out its own version of the “Add to Music App.”