TikTok as a Music Discovery Platform
By Hunter Church
Since the Internet’s big boom in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, it has been used to share music to millions, and billions of people. Though originally done through “peer-to-peer” systems like Napster, music-sharing and streaming evolved within necessary legal battles to get to where it is today, with Spotify and Apple Music running the show.
Along with these new streaming juggernauts are other, smaller streaming platforms, focused more on small artist discovery. Soundcloud and Bandcamp—founded in 2007 and 2008, respectively—have historically championed this genre of music streaming. Rather than solely offering the tunes of more mainstream artists (such as Taylor Swift), on these platforms, users are given a variety of different, often independent artists’ tracks to choose from. Virtually anyone can sign up, too, and thus, these smaller platforms quickly became the new go-to for music publishing and discovery. Numerous artists, bands, and more have spawned popularity and record deals from both Bandcamp and Soundcloud, one well-known example being Car Seat Headrest.
With the introduction of the social media monstrosity, TikTok, however, a new platform for music discovery was born. While users are unable to choose exactly what they listen to, the virality of sound clips is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, both in terms of lifting up already-famous artists, and digging up new ones along the way. In its relatively short lifespan, we have already seen a number of examples of this. For example, in an April 2019 interview with Time, Lil Nas X gave credit to TikTok for his single, “Old Town Road,” exploding in popularity and gaining the number one spot on the Billboard charts, saying, “I should maybe be paying TikTok.” Similarly, much of Doja Cat’s fame came from the platform, with a majority of the tracks on her newest record becoming associated with trends or memes.
Thus, TikTok found its way into the music discovery niche, but the nature of the app is much different than its predecessors. As stated earlier, the user doesn’t really have a direct choice of what they listen to when scrolling through TikTok. Instead, users are barraged by countless different videos, and hence, sound bites, determined by the platform’s algorithm, who the user follows, and the user’s previous likes via the “For You” page. So, a song’s virality is often reliant on it having clip-able moments that might gain some ground throughout the app’s users, and if they’re lucky, make it to the large influencers. This puts a decent portion of the power regarding what can become viral in the hands of bigger profiles, as they make up a lot of what people see on their “For You” page.
Due to these growing influencers and TikTok’s ever-increasing user base (with the first three months of 2020 seeing a record-setting 300 million downloads of the platform), music labels are now turning to larger profiles to promote their music. In a Rolling Stone article, writer Elias Leight found that popular users have been charging artist management anywhere from $2,000 to $30,000 per post, should they use certain songs in their content. This price point would seem to correlate with richer, established artists and labels immediately having priority, and hence virality, over their smaller competition, which is often the opposite of the hierarchy on platforms like Bandcamp and Soundcloud. Additionally, while certain unknown musicians have been able to leverage the platform to find initial success (Arizona Zervas and Powfu, to name a few), we haven’t had enough time with the app to see if TikTok success alone can turn into true, long-term growth.
No matter which artists have an advantage on the platform, TikTok seems to understand its new presence in the music industry regardless. Recently, the company began a four-week “songwriter academy” for thirteen diverse students, with the help of Sony, Syracuse University, and others. Several famous music producers and artists (such as Grammy-winning Timbaland) have also joined in on the project. The main goal of the project is mostly tied to creating opportunities for creatives of color in general than it is specifically tied to music, but it’s clear that TikTok recognizes how they shape the latter, too.
For example, though artists have been able to leverage TikTok to their advantage, it hasn’t been nice to everyone. Noise-pop duo, Black Dresses, recently decided to disband due to unwanted attention and harassment, encouraged partially from brief TikTok fame. In their official statement on the matter, they stated that TikTok’s heavy usage of sound clips from their first album, WASTEISOLATION, caused a spike in attention, and a strong invasion of privacy from listeners. Following this, they started writing music that was less personal in an attempt to stop this behavior toward them, but it didn’t end, which forced them to stop altogether. The platform itself was not the reason for this decision, but its aftermath was, showing that sometimes, TikTok fame isn’t worth it.
For the past ten to twelve years, Bandcamp and Soundcloud have been the go-to platforms for musicians wanting to spawn attention. With certain exceptions like YouTube, they’ve been the safe haven for independent artists to find their stride. But now, Tiktok is showing that it, too, can be a viable platform for gaining music fame. From Lil Nas X to Doja Cat, TikTok has helped artists climb to number one on the Billboard charts. It has also helped make a name for artists we might not have known otherwise, like the aforementioned Powfu. But at the same time, as always, it’s worth mentioning the potential downside to this power: unwanted fame (which was seen with Black Dresses).
Generally, TikTok hasn’t lived long enough to sustain entire careers, but that’s something to keep an eye on as it moves forward. Looking toward the future, I think the app will engrave itself into the minds of aspiring musicians as a place for opportunity to show itself. Hopefully, it will pay off.
In more recent news, since TikTok's longevity in the U.S. is under fire (due to Trump threatening to have it banned in the States), questions regarding the continued success of U.S. artists and influencers that have thrived via the app have arisen. If TikTok dies, what's next? Will a new music sharing and publishing platform rise out of the ashes, or will TikTok prevail despite pressures against it?