Has TikTok Changed the Music Industry For Better or Worse?

The music industry has always had to adjust and adapt along with technological advances. The way we consume and get put onto new songs is different nowadays, and will keep evolving. The MP3 was once the most coveted form of music, but since then we've moved onto ad-free streaming services, and more recently (mostly due to TikTok) we’ve come to discover music through snippets. TikTok was initially musical.ly, before $75 billion Chinese corporation ByteDance bought it and seamlessly urned it into TikTok.

A random 15-second clip can lead to an avalanche of luck for musicians nowadays. Still, it comes with frustrating side effects, like getting famous from a 13 year old lip-synching or doing a ridiculous dance. In 2020 alone, the app had 176 songs, which culminated in over a billion unique video views. But it leads us to wonder - is this app bringing musicians popularity based on talent, or chance?

This app has become a champ at blending music with videos, adding a new definition to the idea of the “music video”. Music is an essential part of the TikTok formula, and plenty of young fans even flock to this app to discover new music, rather than Spotify, Bandcamp, or Soundcloud.

And while a lot of the articles out there are talking about numbers and how TikTok could bring money to the music industry, we’re looking at this through another lens. Social media apps have made getting famous easier than ever. Additionally, music has been commodified like never before.

As music has evolved in the mainstream, it’s become less about the songs themselves, and more about what I like to call The Viral Factor. This changes the musical logic behind the song popularity. It doesn’t matter anymore whether the song is objectively well-constructed, or “good”. It becomes based on whether a large amount of people have come upon it by chance, making the talent of the musicians irrelevant and based on circumstance.

On the other hand, one could argue that TikTok is driving discovery to new artists and their streams, engaging users beyond the short video clip. Songs that have gotten famous from challenges and clips include blue-haired rap-pop artist Ashnikko’s tracks “Daisy” and “STUPID” ft. Yung Baby Tate.

It also adds a unique resource for musicians,When they heard her track “Daisy”, Dr. Dre’s Beats created the #BeatsDaisyChallenge, a TikTok campaign to make a music video out of user-created content. Over the course of a month, the company compiled clips submitted by users, corresponding to the Beats headphone colors. Thanks to the app, “Daisy” rose to #24 on the U.K. charts.

Old school rock band Fleetwood Mac also experienced a spike in streams and listens with their track “Dreams” which was made famous by a TikTok video with a skateboarder and some cranberry juice, in another random aberration of music logic. This was not an intentional promo for the band - it was just another instance of viral TikTok magic.

Perhaps it’s just another means of influencers influencing, but music is sacred for our souls, and it feels wrong to treat it as a mere commodity. If this app uses their powers for good and helps bring a spotlight to underrepresented hidden talents and independent artist, it’ll make the future of music just a little more optimistic.