🎵 Top Sounds 🎵
Our curated picks of the top sounds on TikTok
Makeba 🤪
This sound works on its own as a fun background sound but it also pairs well with the Bill Hader dancing CapCut template.
Attention 📸
This sound is all about showing a transition. From blurry to clear footage or whatever transformation you want to show.Great as a background song to a short video or to show what you’re in love with.
This sound is for celebrations big and small.
This sound is ripped straight from the trailer of The Summer I Turned Pretty season two. It’s New England summer in a TikTok sound.
The sound of ‘euro summer’. This funky sound is perfect as a background for DIY videos or day-in-the-life vlogs.
🔉 Our Sound Highlight 🔉
The Sound Of A Canon Event
Mood: 😱
It’s an ominous sound. Like something ill-fated is finally beginning. Like one too many Subway sandwich orders…
🎥 Video Highlight 🎥
The Milwaukee Public Library has a great TikTok account. Libraries in general, tend to have some pretty cool social strategies but there’s something extra special about the dedication Milwaukee Public Library has to the bit.
👹 Effects Highlight 👹
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The Little Mermaid hit theaters this month and this filter hit TikTok just in time to allow people (and dogs) to feel like mermaids.
As a former Florida resident… Yes, I can see uses for this CapCut template.
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I’m here for the Bill Hader-Seth Meyers-Fred Armisen era of SNL making its way into CapCut templates. In this case, use this template to show your excitement, even if it may be over something reckless or absurd.
🗣️ The Moment 🗣️
Issues that are at the forefront of online discourse— the orcas are coming.
I, for one, welcome our orca overlords.
This sentiment has been echoed (in jest) across most social media over the last week, as memes and jokes were shared in reaction to the news that the orcas are orca-nizing.
The story is fascinating. For the past month, orcas have been ramming boats, targeting and ripping off the rudders, in the waters around the southern coast of Spain. They've sunk three vessels this year, and there’ve been increased encounters in southern Spain since 2020. Around 500 reported encounters in the past three years, in fact. Even more curious, the orcas started joining with other ocean mammals off the coast of Cape Cod (#orcanizeeverywhere).
Some took the orcas’ behavior as a sign of oceanic resistance to the interference of humans. After all, there we are, bobbing on the surface of their home, unwanted, possibly filming a season of Below Deck, causing all kinds of ecological destruction. Of course, the orcas should fight back! Specifically, if they could fight the mega-wealthy on their yachts that’d be great (did you know J.K Rowling had a $19 million yacht formerly owned by Johnny Depp? Some ‘witch trial’).
While we were all enjoying the prospect (however unrealistic) of the collapse of billionaires at the hands fins of the orcas, some enjoyed the idea much less. Specifically, the author of The Atlantic article “Killer Whales Are Not Our Friends.” Now, ignoring the irony that The Atlantic of all publications is home to an anti-orca piece, the article gave us a powerful lesson on how to analyze social media trends.
The article met with a chilly response online as a result of the lack of understanding of the cultural phenomenon. It’s a little meta for me, as a person whose whole deal is breaking down social media trends in the context of culture, to be talking about how to do so effectively. A little uncomfortable even— we all miss sometimes! But this piece didn’t just ‘destroy the fun’ in calling the orcas “sadistic jerks” it missed the bigger story.
Sure, this is a science story, but it is also a story about climate change, wealth, and culture. The orcas are, in the land of memes at least, the vox populi. They are organizers, taking action, and their targets are (at least fictitiously) billionaires and polluters. The memes are so fun because they allow the audience to have a power fantasy, where power is stripped from the wealthy and given over to nature. For all intents and purposes, we are the orcas, and we want justice.
☕ The Zeitgeist ☕
Hot topics from across the internet
This creator’s dedication to finding a bagel is scary but I support it. No gatekeeping!
The Idol is a mess and Sam Levinson is my least favorite nepo baby from 13 members of the crew talking to Rolling Stone about the abusive and backbreaking working conditions created by Levinson on set to the appalling decision to make a feminist satire an ‘edgy’ cult show, and the general dullness of the series, I can’t recommend ignoring a director more.
An AI Beatles song will be released which seems less like an entertainment news story and more like a gag in The Simpsons.
A submersible visiting the wreckage of The Titanic has gone missing the vessel went missing on Sunday and may have as little as 40 hours of oxygen remaining. The voyage costs $250,000 to travel 2.4 miles deep into the ocean to The Titanic wreckage. Among those missing is a UK billionaire.
Details on the vessel: it is controlled by a $30 Logitech gaming remote, is not approved by any regulatory body, and only opens from the outside.
The tactics of Johnny Depp supporters provide a study in digital silencing tactics which may be learned by conservative activists online, and other groups.
TikTok can be a good place sometimes and that’s particularly evident when you get to hear a creator express their feelings and experiences so clearly as @headonfirepod did in response to attacks on LGBT people centered on ‘children’s wellbeing.’
🥡 The Takeaway 🥡
TikTok is seasonal.
You might be able to tell from the sounds I highlighted but TikTok loves to push trends according to seasonality.
Upload a summer sound or trend in summer? Yeah, it has a pretty good chance of being picked up. Summer on TikTok always heralds the return of upbeat funk-inspired sounds, Taylor Swift remixes, and retro ‘euro’ tracks. Knowing these trends cycle back can help you build a strategy that’s more fluid. As simple as it sounds, it is easy to overlook how audience interests shift at different times of the year, and how eager social media sites are to boost trends that mirror audience interests.
This principle doesn’t just apply to ‘summer content’ of course. TikTok trends closely mirror cultural trends. If there’s a big conversation happening in media, or on other sites, it won’t be long before there’ll be a trend, sound, or heap of satirical responses on TikTok.
To succeed on TikTok— whether it be as a VFX and sounds creator or a brand account just trying to grow, you have to keep up with the culture and adapt to audience interests as they evolve.