TikTok and the Music Industry
When a video goes viral on TikTok, its accompanying sound goes viral along with it.
Well duh, right? But this is important. Meteoric, one might say. So keep it in mind.
I’ll say it one more time before we start: When a video goes viral on Tik Tok, its accompanying sound goes viral along with it.
The basic anatomy of a Tik Tok is simple, with only two parts: video and sound. This insanely simple property of a Tik Tok, this idea that when a video goes viral, its accompanying sound goes viral too, has completely changed the entire landscape of the music industry. How? Through a fundamental shift in the power dynamic of the industry.
Before Tik Tok, the artist had the power. Fans could do nothing but sit and wait for the next Jason Derulo single or album, feverishly refreshing Twitter and Instagram, searching for and grasping at any content that gets uploaded. They couldn’t do much, if anything, to influence the music that their favorite artists put out. All they could do was wait. Before Tik Tok, the artists dictated the pace of the industry and the music that they put out.
Tik Tok is changing that.
Tik Tok is beginning to reverse the power dynamic in the music industry (cue “did a full 180” puns). With the viral nature of the platform, users can actually observe the impact that they have on the music industry.
As an unknown, independent artist, Lil Nas X released “Old Town Road” in December of 2018, mocking the cowboy and country trends that had been popular at the time. Lil Nas had no intention of his single ever hitting the charts, but when the Tik Tok community found it in early 2019, it exploded.
Hundreds of thousands of users put on their cowboy hats, dancing along to the track, and the song’s popularity continued to grow. The song that began as a joke and a meme quickly began to climb Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, eventually arriving at the top and spending an unprecedented 19 weeks there. For reference, this tenure atop the chart is the longest in the chart’s 62 year history, crushing the previous record of 16 weeks, held by Justin Bieber, Daddy Yankee, and Louis Fonzi for “Despacito.”
“Old Town Road” spent months drifting across the internet, unnoticed. Lil Nas X was nothing more than a dreamer from Georgia with some talent. The Tik Tok community changed that. The community witnessed first hand its own ability to transform an artist and his/her music from being unknown to being historically successful.
And it’s not just Nas. Countless charting singles and albums can be attributed to TikTok trends. Doja Cat’s “Say So” was originally released as part of her Hot Pink album in 2019 and quickly gained traction after Haley Sharpe posted a dance to the song’s chorus. It was then re-released as a single in January 2020, along with a music video featuring Doja Cat doing Sharpe’s dance, and a cameo by Sharpe herself (pictured on the right). It peaked at the top spot of the Hot 100. 43 years after its original release, Fleetwood Mac’s album “Rumours” made its way back into the top 10.
Artists quickly noticed the power of the Tik Tok community and its ability to popularize music quickly. They began to embrace it, marketing their music through “challenges” and partaking in trends. Justin Bieber choreographed a dance for his lesser known release, “Come Around Me,” and started the viral #ComeAroundMeChallenge. That hashtag (and his song) has over 290 million views on Tik Tok. Megan Thee Stallion saw her song “Savage” explode after a dance trend went viral on Tik Tok and posted a dance challenge for “Captain Hook,” which went viral and subsequently spent 4 weeks on the Hot 100.
This phenomenon quickly spawned a whole new side of the music industry. Artists and producers began making music with the intention of achieving viral success. Music producer Nick Sylvester started Godmode, an artist development company focused on seeking out artists that have the potential for virality and work to create music and content to serve that purpose. One Godmode artist in particular, LoveLeo, began writing music that, according to Sylvester, was “too good,” and “sounded too much like music.” Sylvester and his artists don’t work to create genuine music, they focus more on making music that will be received well by mass markets.
As Tik Tok has continued to grow, the industry power dynamic has continued to shift toward the fans. While some in the industry have pursued the “Godmode strategy” of producing commercialized music intended for mass appeal in reaction to Tik Tok’s growth, others more recently have begun to make music that infuses already popular Tik Tok sounds from members of the Tik Tok community.
In other words, sounds that are created by the users themselves are incorporated into music of some of the top artists in the world, including Jason Derulo’s “Savage Love,” which is written to the melody of a viral Tik Tok beat called “Laxed.” In OTHER other words, sounds and samples that have already succeeded in the Tik Tok community are then being used in songs by artists who presume their songs’ success because of this. In OTHER OTHER other words (last one I promise), fans are literally helping make the music that their favorite artists release.
This is the fairytale end to the will they/won’t they between the music industry and social media. A world in which fans and artists are so interconnected that the fans become collaborators with their favorite artists. This in turn will allow artists to make deeper, more real connections with their fans, which would cause the fans to have more influence and interest in the artists’ content. It’s a wonderful feedback loop that benefits both fans and the artists they love, and it was all born out of one simple idea:
When a video goes viral on tik tok, its accompanying sound goes viral along with it.