Words: Izzy Bassett / Videos courtesy of artists
Love it or hate it, no one can deny the impact TikTok has had on today’s music industry. Propelled by its popularity, Izzy Bassett asks what is it about the short-form video platform that’s so revolutionary and introduces us to some of the artists rising in its ranks.
TikTok. A name that’s been branded onto society’s tongue. Love it or hate it (much like Marmite), no one can deny the impact the social media outlet has had on today’s music industry. With one billion active monthly users, TikTok has accomplished the growth in four years that Instagram did in ten. Whilst the platform started with mainly dance trends, it’s now vastly widespread into every inch of whatever your mind desires. This has a huge impact on popular music today and begs the question of how we see so many TikTok artists and sounds climbing the charts. What is so revolutionised about TikTok that other platforms haven’t caught up to yet?
Since 2016, we’ve seen a blast of new artists and an extensive collection of new genres and sub-genres enter the realm of music from the land of TikTok. With the launch of Elevate, TikTok’s latest program to celebrate emerging artists on the platform, TikTok offers a space for established artists to push their music too. I’m sure over the past few years we have all been guilty of adding that overplayed fifteen-second song off TikTok to our music libraries, be it that of an artist discovered by accident or a trending artist.
Rising the ranks, Lauren Spencer Smith is a prime example of the influence TikTok had on her career. Two years after she got booted from the top 20 round of American Idol, she went viral on TikTok. She drummed up so much anticipation with snippets of songs on her TikTok account that she gained over 30 million views before release when her song ‘Fingers Crossed’ was finally dropped she had nearly 15 million streams within twelve hours of its first deliverance.
Along with artists such as Em Belihold and JVKE, Bella Poarch’s TikTok career story is definitely one to seize with an open mind. Poarch’s military career-tuned gamer turned songwriter is almost unbelievable. As the third most followed person on TikTok, Bella’s content started as gaming and cosplay videos before the renowned ‘Sophie Aspin send’ started making the rounds on the platform. The American singer filmed a video of her lip-syncing to a 15-second snippet of the song, a trend which many jumped onto (including Kim Kardashian recently), and it quickly became the most liked video on TikTok. A year later, she released her song ‘Build A Bitch’ and her music career began just like that. She is now estimated to be worth $4 million.
Although new artists are finding more footholds in the charts, more established artists are using TikTok as a mastery for their promotion. Olivia Rodrigo is a motivator of this, following the start of her career on High School Musical: The Musical, Rodrigo went on to focus more on her music career with her record label. She released her first song after HSMTM, ‘Drivers Licence’ which broke several records and was a best-selling song of 2021. The song mainstreamed on TikTok for a long time with an accompanying trend which helped boost the song’s exposure. On follow-up record SOUR, many of those songs also started as trending sounds on TikTok further pushed by her GUTS album which had the same effect on the platform.
Doja Cat is also a prime example of this. Her first recognised song was from YouTube, ‘Mooo!’ which was broadcast into a meme, but her album Hot Pink which eventually peaked at number 9 on the Billboard 200 was what pushed her into the arms of TikTok. Her song ‘Say So’ gained wider popularity through the app during the start of lockdown. Following the pattern of Rodrigo, her later albums Planet Her and Scarlet were also a part of the trending game on TikTok which boosted her popularity.
Another example of artists’ songs trending and putting them in the charts is Doja Cat with her song ‘Kill Bill’. Most music artists will have official accounts on TikTok, playing a gamble with the algorithm and the viral tunes that pollute our feeds.
Music from TikTok is also a good tool for fandoms and events. Taylor Swift, a household name worldwide, is currently on the American leg of her Eras tour and even If you are not a Swiftie, you would have heard of The Eras tour courtesy of TikTok. The tour even has its own page accessible from the TikTok search bar. Google Trends accurately shows that interest in Taylor Swift has grown over the last 5 years and mostly it’s not even from her team’s PR and marketing perspective. It’s the fans on TikTok who are posting The Eras videos, the last year has seen more than a handful of Swift’s songs trending with a dance or a trend.
The release of her Taylor’s Version albums has rocked the platform of its hinges as the cover of the tour has led more new Swifties into her arms. Taylor’s song ‘Cruel Summer’ which was part of her 2019 Lover album has recently rendered the charts after it became every user’s business to scream the entire bridge of the song. It still sat at number 21 in the UK charts four years on. TikTok has a fantastic grasp of all opportunities and even has its own feature leading to helping these artists exposure, every time you want to create content with the option to add a song it has a specific chart labelled Viral 50 which will have all the trending songs added to it along with a UK and US chart section.
I’m sure every person has heard at one point or another, ‘You don’t know what real music is’ or ‘They don’t make songs like they did in the 70’s’ and I’m afraid to say it but in some respect they are true. Several songs from this time-period (and no, not when the ark sailed) are rivalling current songs on the charts all because of TikTok. The most self-explanatory example is… the guy riding a skateboard… drinking cranberry juice… listening to Fleetwood Mac. This one video racked up 2.9 million on-demand streams.
Along with the cranberry-gate video another person who was born again in this era was Kate Bush. After the Stranger Things supremacy passed over the population Running Up That Hill which was originally released in 1985, came storming to take charge of TikTok and ended up with streams going up 9000%. From dances, covers, edits and makeup trends the song was used nearly 2 million times. TikTok is diverse and all it takes is for the algorithm to pick up on one video to become viral.
TikTok is a world of diverse wonder for all aspects of interest; ABBA, hot on the remixes and Eurovision fan favourites like Alexander Rybak’s fairy-tale along with Loreen’s Euphoria is always popping back in to make an appearance amongst the trending pop songs.
Although TikTok may be a great tool at an artist’s disposal, there are some cons to the social media platform. Firstly, people should change the metaphor from ‘It isn’t rocket science’ to ‘It isn’t TikTok science’ since who really knows how the algorithm works. There is no real certainty in the idea of going viral. Another downfall on the artist’s end, the video edits may not necessarily be the best meaning they can pick the best parts of their music to show the world. This unravels the dangers of live performance. More and more artists are now struggling in a live setting with vocal agility and projection. As brilliant as Pinkpanthress is, she’s been caught out for these faults at her live shows and fans have not been impressed. Bedroom pop is a subgenre that is featured heavily on TikTok but a lot of this has come from social media and the impact of COVID-19, these bedroom performance doesn’t reflect the same qualities live and it’s getting more and more common in the industry.
This leaves us all with the question of how this much effect has come from this app, effects that have never been seen with its predecessor musically or Instagram or Twitter? What makes TikTok different and is this new wave of music artists coming from short form TikTok videos preparing to fully take over the industry, artists that are not fully ready to take the live stage. Regardless of any personal agenda towards the app, TikTok is still clocking up those hours on the charts.
LDN 