Case Study: How a Music Clipping Campaign Took a Song Into the Top 10 in 3 Weeks

A three-week Clip Mansion clipping campaign took an independent dance artist's single into the top 10 of the Beatport Indie Dance chart and to #24 on Spotify's Top Songs chart in Australia. Our creators posted 500 videos using the track on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, and those videos earned 15.1 million views. The sound then trended on TikTok and Instagram, and the track's Spotify streams more than doubled, from 65,274 to 144,768.

The artist has asked us not to name them, so this case study covers the campaign without the name. Everything else here is from the campaign itself.

The goal

The track was a new independent release with no label campaign behind it. The goal was simple: get the song heard by enough people, often enough, that they go and find it. For a song, that means getting the official sound into as many short-form videos as possible, because every video that uses the sound sends viewers to the sound's page and from there to streaming.

Ads can buy a song impressions. They can't make a sound trend, because a trend needs lots of different accounts using the same sound at the same time. That's what a music clipping campaign is built for.

How the campaign ran

1. Brief. We wrote a brief around the parts of the track that work in a short video: the hook and the drop. Every video had to use the official sound, so that every view also counted towards the sound itself.
2. Creators. The brief went out to creators in our network whose audiences fit dance music. They made their own videos and posted them on their own TikTok, Instagram and YouTube accounts.
3. Review. Every video was checked against the brief before its views counted. Videos that missed the brief were rejected and earned nothing.
4. Verification. Views were checked for bots on Try Shoot before any creator was paid.

Over three weeks, creators posted 500 videos using the track, and those videos reached 15.1 million views. That's an average of about 30,000 views a video. In clipping, views are rarely spread evenly: a small share of videos usually earns most of them, which is why you need many videos to find the ones the algorithm picks up.

What happened next

The part that turned views into a chart position came after our videos.

• The sound trended. With hundreds of videos using it at once, the sound started trending on TikTok and Instagram. People outside the campaign started using it in their own videos, adding tens of millions more views on top of the 15.1 million from our creators. We didn't pay for those views and we don't count them in the campaign total.
• Streams followed. Viewers went from the videos to the song. Spotify streams went from 65,274 on 24 September to 144,768 on 16 October, an increase of 79,494 streams (122%) in just over three weeks. Plays rose on Apple Music and YouTube too.
• The charts followed the streams. The track reached the top 10 of the Beatport Indie Dance chart and #24 on Spotify's Top Songs chart in Australia.

What the numbers show

1. The sound is what you're really paying to spread

The 15.1 million views were the visible part. What moved the song up the charts was the sound trending, and that only happens when lots of accounts use it at once. Requiring the official sound on every video is what turned paid views into free ones.

2. Volume matters more than any single video

500 videos from different accounts gave the algorithm 500 chances to pick the song up. One perfect ad gives it one.

3. Three weeks was enough

The campaign went from launch to the top 10 inside three weeks. A release has the most momentum in its first few weeks, which is when a clipping campaign does the most good.

What to copy from this campaign

• Require the official sound on every video. Without it, the views help the creator's account but not your song.
• Brief the hook, not the whole track. Short-form videos are 10 to 30 seconds. Tell creators which part of the song to use.
• Launch close to release day, while the track is new and the platforms are still testing it.
• Track streams and the sound page, not only views. The views from our creators are the input. Streams and chart positions are the result.

Our earlier music campaign, for Cedric Gervais's "Gotta Be", shows the same model: 16.8M views and 3.1M engagements from 1,629 videos. For how campaigns are priced, see how much a clipping agency costs.

If you have a release coming up, tell us about it and we'll plan the campaign around your release date.

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