TikTok is Accelerating the Falsification of the Music Industry
Maddy Black / Feb 21 / Social Media
Tiktok’s powerful influence over the music industry looms larger every day, with the success of immense chart-toppers like ‘Old Town Road’, ‘Say So’ and ‘WAP’ largely indebted to the video-sharing app. Its algorithm, the wizard behind the curtain, has been something of a golden ticket for young content creators and artists, catapulting them into fame. Though the music track will technically serve as a prop for the user’s video content, its background role is no less effective in reaping an economic bounty for artists. As a regrettably avid Tiktok user, my own experience confirms this: despite never choosing to listen to Drake’s ‘Tootsie Slide’, I undoubtedly could recite its choreography to you if asked. In fact, ‘Tootsie Slide’ is one sure example of how the siren call of Tiktok-induced fame is increasingly impelling artists to release music that was produced with Tiktok and its users in mind. Drops, hooks, and lyrics which enact a conversation curry favour with Tiktok users. Simple and repetitive melodies triumph over unpredictable ones.
Drake, alongside artists such as Justin Bieber, have been accused of engineering music precisely for the purpose of going viral. It’s an accusation which undermines the artistic expression and creativity supposedly at the heart of an artist’s project. Admittedly, the repetitious lyrics and monotonous melody self-evident in these songs offers little in rebuttal. Google the lyrics of ‘Yummy’ and draw your own conclusions.
But it makes sense that there is an increasing trend of artists appealing to the Tiktok pipeline to commercial success. In the pandemic’s wake, the experiential economy has ground to an unexpected halt. Live shows and touring, which in ordinary circumstances would be an artist’s primary source of revenue, are no longer a possibility. Tiktok offers an alternative opportunity for music to be widely and quickly circulated via content and one which the artists themselves can readily get involved in, creating their own accounts and interacting with their fans as a kind of self-perpetuating exposure.
Contemporary and established artists are migrating to the app in droves.
Dua Lipa recently encouraged fans to choreograph their own dances to ‘Levitate’, with the reward incentive that she would choose the best choreography to feature in the song’s music video. It’s just one example of the many artists trying to get their foot in the door of the Tiktok music marketplace. Once a sound achieves popularity, it is swept up in a snowballing effect. Millions of users will jump on the bandwagon, and this can culminate in titanic overnight success. It is already fairly commonplace for the ordinary Tiktok user to amass views in the 10,000’s, 100,000’s or millions, of which the desire to go viral is not a necessary constituent. This is a unique merit of the app: that ordinary users can achieve the feeling of going ‘viral’ far more frequently.
Though the world of the celebrity is hardly a meritocracy, criticism against Tiktok artists like Dixie D’Amelio and Olivia Rodrigo typically takes shape in accusations that they are undeserving. Rodrigo’s debut single ‘Drivers License’ had a freakishly successful first week in US streaming, eclipsing ‘God’s Plan’ and achieving the most domestic streams in the first week in US history (82 million). Most of that success can be attributed to its vast and rapid dissemination on Tiktok, amongst Gen Z’s who were familiar with Rodrigo’s acting on Disney Channel. Tiktok has been praised for being more authentic than its competitors like Facebook and Instagram. The purpose of the videos, to entertain, peels away the veneer of the ‘perfect life’ that Instagram has fostered in the past decade. Participating in dance trends, discussing political opinions, telling life stories or sharing cooking tips - these all lean into a sense of community and commonality. This of course does not negate the toxicity of Tiktok. That sense of community is in part constructed by the app’s algorithm, which, by showing you what it believes you want to see, creates a personal echo chamber. Being alienated from a diverse range of opinions and lifestyles creates a reality which tells us that everyone is like us. Even writing this article, I am conscious that my Tiktok ‘For You’ page represents a miniscule subset of the vast ideological scope contained within the app. As the saying famously goes, one man’s trash is another man’s favourite Doja Cat fancam.
In many ways, then, Tiktok holds a mirror up to your personality. But this self-replicating aspect is contributing to the formation of parasocial relationships between creators and their fans. As artists dive into that interactive, co-creative world in order to promote their music and give back to their fans, users feel ever more entitled to place their own expectations upon these artists and creators. If these creators ever get ‘cancelled’, it’s their own fans acting as judge and jury.
And as users hold increasing command over the trajectory of artists, these artists are increasingly relegated from the elusive category of celebrity. Often, efforts to enchant fans and the algorithm are hardly subtle. Just as Tiktok enables the ordinary person to unexpectedly rise to fame, it can pull the already famous in the opposite direction, humiliating our cultural conception of the celebrity. Jason Derulo’s TikTok account, which involve cheap pranks where he pretends to accidentally knock out his front teeth, and in another video ridicules a girl for having armpit hair, seem utterly discordant with the smooth talking chart-topping artist of the 2010s. These transparent and even desperate appeals to the younger generation against the backdrop of his immense California mansion beg the question: how much do these celebrities need Tiktok? They’re regarded as trend-setters, the obsessions of tabloid magazines that desperately try and decode their elusive lifestyles. In the Tiktok sphere, they are not setting trends - they’re following them.
So what might we make of Tiktok’s impact one the music industry? In some ways, it’s an equalising force, one where the lottery of fame bestows its riches more evenly. Yet the notable overly-manufactured tracks that have benefited through TikTok circulation and garnered critique are not those made by ordinary users. They are made by already established artists. Both that bid to stay relevant that characterises so much celebrity TikTok behaviour, and the hollow commercial project that many celebrity artists’ work implies, are contributing to the de-romanticisation of the celebrity on Tiktok. In an internet culture increasingly respecting authenticity, superficial appeals to potential customers are not gone amiss. The mechanically produced tracks may get their fifteen minutes of fame, but it’s the artists who commit to expressing their authentic self, both in their music and online persona, who will achieve longevity.