An aspiring singer was ready to give up on her dream. Then a TikToker discovered her music, and it changed her life.

• A TikToker is on a mission to shine a spotlight on underappreciated musicians.
• The host of TikTok radio show "The Bun 91.3" scours Spotify for impressive artists with few followers.

In November 2022, a 25-year-old TikToker based in Chicago, who asked Insider that he be referred to by his radio show name "The Bun 91.3" due to privacy concerns, posted a video that showed him sitting in front of his desk, as he introduced a song called "2:00am" by Sarah Crean, a little-known musician at the time.

In the upload, the host said Crean had just 295 monthly Spotify listeners, but described her sound as something "I honestly can't get enough of" and dedicated the remainder of the 15-second-clip to the track, which played in the background as images of the musician flashed on screen.

The music recommendation blew up, with 4.6 million views and over 3,300 comments who praised The Bun for shining a light on the artist, including Crean herself who wrote, "thank you so much !!" alongside a tearful emoji, in a top comment that received over 37,000 likes.

She told Insider she credits The Bun, and that very video, with changing her life.

The TikTok series began as a creative outlet and passion project for the host

The Bun, who is a mechanical engineer by day, told Insider he has no specific background in music but after long days at work he wanted to do something creative with his limited free time, and was inspired by fellow TikTokers like Axel Tanner, who provide music recommendations to 1.2 million followers.

Just for fun, and because he hadn't seen anyone else do it, The Bun decided he would don some old-school aviator sunglasses and play it in the style of a cheesy, 1980s DJ, and started posting videos about random bands he liked back in January 2022. Then he noticed some of the smaller artists he enjoyed weren't getting much traction on the app, so he decided to specifically focus on up-and-comers who had plenty of talent but not much marketing behind them.

One of The Bun's first recommendations that popped off was in October 2022, and featured a track called "Dove" by the band Bird Photos, who he said had just 85 monthly listeners at the time. The video received over 650,000 views, and the band currently has over 36,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.

"I just get a lot of joy out of them winning," The Bun told Insider, when he sees his viewers check them out. His ultimate hope is the artists will get enough online recognition they can ditch any side jobs, focus full-time on their music, and get a record deal. "That's what I want them to do, and that's what I try to do at least with every single video," he said.

To date, he's uploaded over 200 videos giving little-known solo artists and bands a boost. He told Insider he gets up at 5:30 a.m. before work and dedicates the first 30 minutes of his day to finding new tracks, creating a playlist which he'll listen to in more depth when he can throughout the day.

Initially, he had a few tactics for finding obscure music, which generally involved falling down the "rabbit hole" of Spotify, searching through random playlists and making a note of any he liked that had few followers. He also used Instagram to look into local bands playing at small venues and sought out their music too.

These days, with 193,000 followers and a stack of viral videos behind him, the research phase is a little easier as many artists now come directly to him, hoping to become his next artist recommendation to get signed to a major record label, just like Crean.

Crean's music career changed drastically after she was featured on The Bun's TikTok

The first time Crean heard about The Bun was when her song showed up in one of his videos. The 22-year-old from London, UK, told Insider she thought it was "really cool" at first, and didn't expect it to get as "crazy" as it did.

"The TikTok has genuinely catapulted my career to a level I'm still trying to process," she said. "I went from having 295 monthly listeners on Spotify to now having 170,000 monthly listeners which is just too bizarre to comprehend."

Before the TikTok was posted, Crean said her career had hit a lull. She wasn't being booked for shows, she had no specific plans for a release, and had all but given up, with plans to return to college instead. Then the video came out and before she knew it she was signed by a record label called AWAL, whose roster includes musicians such as The Wombats, deadmau5, and Little Simz.

"It was definitely all very sudden and I'm still learning every day how to process just how much the TikTok exposure has changed my life but my gratitude for it all is immense," she said.

She described what The Bun is doing by giving smaller artists a boost as "phenomenal" and said she is "forever indebted" to him.

"He's putting really incredible artists forward to such an open-minded following and it's opening so many doors for them," she said. "I'm obviously biased because of the doors he has opened for me, but I think he's got something really special there."

For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.