TikTok Takeover - Industry Week 2025 | 3-7 March Confetti Nottingham & London

About

From building a fanbase to predicting viral trends – TikTok is coming to Confetti!

Learn about everything from the future of music to monetising new tech – this is your chance to hear from those behind one of the biggest apps in the world.

Schedule

10am, Zara Kaneva, Music’s Digital Transformation – The Codependence of Creativity and Technology – BOOK NOW
12pm, James Lightfoot, Virality – Can it be predicted? – BOOK NOW
2.30pm, Rachel Young, Building a fanbase on TikTok in 2025 – BOOK NOW
4pm, Rachel Young, Monetising new technology in music – BOOK NOW

Zara Kaneva: Music’s Digital Transformation – The Codependence of Creativity and Technology

How have technology & social media influenced the independent music industry? TikTok’s Zara Kaneva explores the mutual dependence of music and technology in shaping the modern music industry; and how you can benefit from it.

Zara is Product & Distribution Manager for the European market at (SoundOn), TikTok, where she has been instrumental in shaping the platform’s music distribution operations since joining in 2022. She played a key role in launching and scaling SoundOn’s distribution services in Europe, integrating state-of-the-art features to empower artists and labels with the best tools the industry has to offer.

With a strong background in music technology, Zara spent several years working closely with major music companies and their tech teams, fostering strategic partnerships and driving innovation at the intersection of music and technology. Her expertise lies in building scalable solutions that enhance music distribution in the digital age.

James Lightfoot: Virality – Can it be predicted?

With so many artists and songs being released every day, how do you stay ahead of the curve? In this session we are going to take you through a checklist of every step you need to take when setting up a song release, from uploading the song to creating the marketing assets. Then, we will do a deep dive into some viral songs of the past few years and analyse the key elements you can bring to your next campaign.

Working on TikTok’s music team for 3.5 years, James has helped shepherd a new wave of artists using the platform to supercharge their careers.

Starting his career in music as an artist and producer/songwriter manager, James was involved in multiple top 10 single campaigns and numerous #1 hit songs around the world.

He moved to TikTok in 2021 as an Artist Partnerships Manager and has been integral to many hit song campaigns on TikTok including RAYE’s ‘Escapism.’, Calvin Harris’ ‘Miracle’ and Eliza Rose’s ‘Baddest of Them All’. James has years of experience in artist education, best practice, marketing, campaign management and content creation.

Moving to the Global Partnerships team, James worked on song and album campaigns and large scale events for an array of artists such as Charli XCX, Burna Boy, Jack Harlow and Dua Lipa.

He was one of the first members of the SoundOn UK team and brought in artists like Kenya Grace, Caity Baser and Artemas. Now acting primarily in an A&R capacity, James is discovering and signing artists to SoundOn and helping take their careers to the next level.

Rachel Young

Rachel will run two sessions:

Building a fanbase on TikTok in 2025

Rachel will take you through the latest free to use tools and services to help build your audience as an artist on TikTok.

Monetising new technology in music

Superfans, AI, vinyl revival, streaming fraud, data analytics, emerging markets – what does it all mean?! Buzzwords plague the music industry; get to know the real technology advancements that matter in music, and how you can monetise them.

Rachel is Head of Product, Distribution and Monetisation EMEA (SoundOn) at TikTok. Originally joining the business in 2022, she oversees the build and integration of all new services in the EMEA region for TikTok’s in house distribution platform. In the past 12 months, she has also been responsible for all in app music product rollouts, encompassing the full artist lifecycle; from artist engagement features to promotional tools and new artist monetization opportunities.

Prior to joining TikTok, Rachel spent 4 years at music technology company Instrumental, powering label growth via data science and machine learning. Within Instrumental’s label team, FRTYFVE, she developed their bespoke music distribution platform and scored 3x UK no.1 singles.

These talks will also be streamed and you can book an online ticket for each of the talks: