Time was that if you had a new single to launch, you would do a partnership with a key publication (The Guardian, Pitchfork and NME seemed to be the go-to places for that for a while) or nail down a big YouTube premiere. Or even, and this used to be the only way to do it, give the first play to a tastemaker radio station and plug the living daylights out of it for about two weeks in advance.

Now you just do a livestream on TikTok and play the new single there for the first time. You control everything and know that a huge chunk of your hardcore audience are going to see it there and then spread the word further and wider on your behalf.

That is the approach Yungblud took to launch his new single, ‘Fleabag’. He was playing a five-night residency at the Kentish Town Forum in London as part of his Occupy The UK tour and on the penultimate night in the capital he performed the new single for the first time.

“Yungblud knows what his fans want and is one of the most creative and successful artists on our platform,” said David Mogendorff, head of artist partnerships at TikTok.

On paper, it is not a show-stopping activation for a campaign. “Pop star plays new single during livestream,” is hardly a hold-the-presses headline, but the context is what is most important here.

He has 3.8m followers on TikTok as opposed to just 622k followers on Twitter and 425k followers on Facebook. He does have, however, 3.6m followers on Instagram and 2.4m subscribers on his YouTube channel, suggesting there is a clear split in uptake between his standard social media channels and those platforms that emphasise video and visual content.

The timing of the TikTok partnership is key. Planning the single launch there just at the moment TikTok becomes his dominant social channel might have been a gamble; but having the platform get behind it amplified the impact of not just the single launch but also YungBlud’s own follower count on there.