Cork woman’s career in music industry - from MTV to Sony, Apple and now TikTok

FROM brainstorming with Ed Sheeran’s team on how the superstar can get the most out of TikTok, to helping stars get started, it’s all in a day’s work for Cork woman Darina Connolly.

She is Head Of Label & Artist Partnerships at TikTok and works with established and new artists, along with label companies and others in the music industry, from bedroom producers to buskers, on how to consistently get the most from the globally popular platform.

While lots of people might still associate TikTok with lipsync or dance videos, Darina, from Kanturk, points out there’s been huge work done to move away from that perception, and says the platform can now be an incredibly valuable place to launch or even revive an artist’s career.

“When it comes to music, it’s a really powerful platform and we have seen a rise of very many artists who have found success on TikTok, people who use the platform to find an audience, grow a fanbase, and then promote their music to them, which then translates into chart positions, which translates into people buying tickets for shows,” she explains.

She cites Ali Sherlock, from Douglas, as a good example of that.

“Ali is fantastic on the platform. She does a lot of covers, but she also performs her own original music, and does a lot of entertaining and funny videos. 

Also, Cian Ducrot from Passage West who has gone viral several times on TikTok, he has 3.5million followers, and has seen that translated to off-platform success.

“We support artists at all levels of their career, making sure that those endemic artists and well established artists understand the power of TikTok, and what they can do with the platform.”

Working in the music industry was always what Darina aspired to, even if she had no idea what such a job actually looked like.

“When mum would go to the city to get her hair done, I’d jump at the chance to go along and go into HMV and Golden Discs,” she remembers.

“I loved music growing up but never realised you didn’t have to be a musician to work in the industry. It wasn’t until I was doing Transition Year work experience in RTÉ Cork that a producer called Rory Cobbe took me under his wing and opened a whole new world of possibilities to me.

“He was working on a show called No Disco, and he started introducing me to fact there was a whole industry around music other than what you put in your CD player,” she said.

Darina went on to study multimedia in what was CIT, which at the time was a new and ground- breaking course. After spending a summer in Boston on a J1 and graduating, she returned to Cork and worked in an internet café on Oliver Plunkett Street.

“At this stage, the security of university was over, I was out on my own, and as I was spending all day in front of a computer, I had plenty to time to research various entry level jobs, so I decided I’d see where it would take me,” she said.

That attitude took her all the way to MTV in London, where she secured a nine-month internship.

“It was unbelievably exciting, even getting the interview, and I can still remember taking that early morning flight from Cork. 

I didn’t rate my chances at all but I got it and moved to London. That was nearly 20 years ago – I never left! I knew as soon as I got on the plane to leave Cork, I was ready to see what the world had for me.

This was in 2005, and working with MTV was every bit as exciting as it sounds. Darina worked with the talent and music department and on her first day she was tasked with looking after Craig David and Charlotte Church. “A big part of my job was to make sure talent was looked after. The post was another big thing, as this was still a time when time when people would send in hard copies of CDs, etc,” she remembers.

The internship transitioned into a three month position working with the MTV music awards, and she was involved the year Justin Timberlake presented the huge global event.

Her next career move was Colombia Records, owned by Sony, where she spent five years, and from there to Apple, when it was iTunes and Apple Music, where she worked for a decade.

“I’ve been at TikTok now for the last two and half years. It’s a very entertaining platform, but it’s also very much a platform for success and what we do is about educating on how to build that success, adding value to what’s going on.

So if a track is showing popularity, if people are using it in content more, we add value to that organic traction by education, in app promotion and various other things.

“No two days are ever the same, it’s a very dynamic environment, things move very fast and it’s about making sure the industry has the best information from us to find success.”

The real magic about the TikTok platform, she says, is that you can never predict what is going to go viral. Well discussed examples are Meghan Trainor’s Made You Look and Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush.

That hit got a start on Stranger Things but Darina says people then came to TikTok to start creating with it, and it reached entire new audiences, and took the number one chart spot, which it hadn’t done when it was first released.

A few years back, Dreams by Fleetwood Mac was used in a random way on the platform and went back into the top 40 in the charts.

“It’s that complete unpredictability that I find so fascinating. Anything can happen at any time and we say quite often that it just takes one creation to make a trend. Every massive trend you see, or every track that’s gone viral has come from one person, posting one time and it’s grown from there. We can never predict what will resonate, it’s the TikTok community that decide that they want to create more and more videos with a particular track. 

Then, when we see that magic happen, we’re here to facilitate that success and make sure that everyone can capitalise on it.

Her advice to an artist keen to engage is to “dive into TikTok, start experimenting”.

“We have conversations from endemic to the most A plus, plus, plus artists and our advice is to just jump in and make some mistakes. Be authentic, express yourself, and be creative and have fun. Every artist has a home on TikTok but it is a matter of finding your own lane and voice.”

Among the music accounts she likes to follow herself are Chasing Abbey, Yunè Pinku, Jazzy and Robert Grace.

“One of my favourite non-music people to follow is The Pool Guy. He goes around cleaning pools and it’s the most relaxing thing ever to see!” she said.

Creative freedom is her favourite thing about her job.

“You can think of an idea and you have the opportunity and empowerment to make it real, which I really enjoy,” she said.

And when she’s not working, she enjoys exercising, reformer pilates and meditation.

“I also like to unwind and enjoy time with my fiancée Wendy and play with our new adopted kitten. Wendy is a doctor in the NHS so we complement each other – she loves to hear what I do every day for some light relief.”

The couple are planning their wedding for next March in London, which will mean just a short trip over for her family who are mainly Kanturk-based, including mum Marie, sister Andrea and her nieces Orlaith and Sadhbh. And while London is where her life is now, Cork, she says, will always be home.