A "BEAUTIFUL" RUN: TIKTOK GETS BEHIND BOONE (UPDATE)

UPDATE: Extremely early figures show that Benson Boone's debut LP Fireworks & Rollerblades is projecting a first week above 50k—a very impressive showing for the pop-rock breakthrough. Stay tuned for complete one-day projections on Saturday.

Among the year’s hottest breakouts, Night Street/Warner’s Benson Boone has taken TikTok’s ability to launch trends into another dimension.

It starts with a great song, of course, and “Beautiful Things” has waved the flag for a brand of expansive pop-rock that dominated the airwaves two decades ago courtesy of OneRepublic, The Fray and The Script.

But before “Beautiful Things”—the biggest song this year with a 2024 release date—became a global #1 (31 days atop Spotify, for those keeping track), Boone had success on TikTok with multiple cuts, which led to hundreds of millions of streams. “In the Stars” and “Ghost Town” have combined for 1b Spotify streams. Both are included on Boone’s Fireworks & Rollerblades, arriving 4/5. With “Beautiful Things” added to the mix, album activity ahead of release is at 420k+.

The song has generated 4m+ creations on TikTok, the track’s popularity sending it to #1 in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Canada, France and Australia, among other territories. On Friday (3/28) Boone threw a listening party on the platform to promote the release of Fireworks & Rollerblades, playing the entire LP and, naturally, livestreaming the performance. TikTok featured Boone in its #NewMusic hub ahead of the album playback.

The platform has likewise lent its support via banners and playlisting, spotlights on its socials and a splashy OOH campaign for the singer-songwriter that saw his image plastered onto billboards and bus stops (pictured above in New York City).

Since he teased “Beautiful Things” on TikTok in late 2023, Boone has doubled his followers to 6.2m+.

He didn’t reinvent this wheel, but Boone’s ascent underscores what’s possible when TikTok—and its potential audience of 1.5 billion—gets behind a hit song.