TikTok announces its first music competition

TikTok is entering the music competition space with "Gimme The Mic."

"Gimme The Mic" is a global competition that aims to "discover new musical talent and support aspiring music creators," according to a TikTok blog post. Any user 18 or older can enter the competition. It's an expansion of TikTok's LIVE offerings.

The competition has three phases: audition, semi-final, and grand-finale. The audition portion of the competition opened yesterday (August 7) and closes August 16. To audition users sing up on TikTok and post a video with the hashtag "GimmeTheMic."

Thirty of the top creators who auditioned will be chosen to compete head-to-head in the semi-finals. Each hopeful will be paired up with another creator and compete against them in a series of TikTok LIVEs in September. Viewers will be able to vote for their favorite performance.

The top 10 will move on to the U.S. grand-finale on September 10 when the "Gimme The Mic" champion will be crowned. The U.S. winner will receive 50,000 Diamonds. The winners from each country will have the opportunity to compete for the title of Global "Gimme The Mic" Champion on September 22 and 23 for a grand prize of 500,000 Diamonds.

Generally, TikTok defines Diamonds as "a measurement of the popularity of relevant user content" and based on the number of Gifts a user receives. Typically, TikTok takes half the profit from Diamonds but won't for this competition. Diamonds can be exchanged for U.S. dollars, but the exchange rate is unspecified. Estimates place the worth of a Diamond at 5 cents.

If you do the math, it doesn't seem like "Gimme The Mic" will be doing that much to support aspiring music creators monetarily. Here's hoping the publicity on the app will lead to more lucrative opportunities.