It’s a good time to be a musician on TikTok. The new SoundOn program is letting artists distribute their work across global platforms, and one TikTok-famous musician is even going to the Eurovision Song Contest.
Meanwhile, on our side of the Atlantic Ocean, there’s a new reality competition series that will give one TikTok musician the chance to appear in a Pepsi commercial during the Video Music Awards (VMAs). The show is called Becoming A Popstar, and its first episode will air on MTV on March 24.
The eight musicians who will compete on the show all have significant followings on TikTok. Their follower counts range from 30,000 (for singer Brian Vaulx Jr.) to 150,000 (for onetime Shawn Mendes opener Alexi Blue). Becoming A Popstar will test the artists’ songwriting abilities and will ask them to adapt their social media personae to fit a variety of challenges. One such challenge will require the contestants to pair up and perform a duet together.
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Each musician will upload a one-minute song to TikTok each week, and Becoming A Popstar‘s three judges — Becky G, Joe Jonas, and Sean Bankhead — will evaluate those submissions to determine which ones have the most pop potential. The show’s voting rounds will also employ TikTok, with the short-form video app serving as Becoming A Popstar‘s official “second screen.”
At the end of the season, one of the up-and-coming TikTokers will be recruited to film a Pepsi commercial that will air during the VMAs. Since the voting structure seems like a popularity contest, I’d put my money on the artists with the six-digit follower counts, but this is reality TV, so there will probably be plenty of curveballs thrown in to shake things up.
Becoming a Popstar will air weekly at 10 PM ET/PT. Jesse Collins Entertainment and Paramount’s Velocity studio are producing the show.
