It is strange to think that only a few decades ago, the only way to stream music on your own was to buy a physical CD. Back then, there was no way to customize your own playlists with a click of a button, and no one knew what a “subscription service” was. Life for music fans was somehow simpler even though they had to run the extra mile just to listen to music from their favorite artists. When online streaming was invented, the music market saw a gradual decline in CD sales and radio listeners. Platforms such as apple music, itunes, and spotify made it easier to not only listen to music, but also discover your own personal taste. With those apps came the social media powerhouse that relies on short music clips: Tiktok. From then on, music consumption was never the same again.

So… why does this matter? This seems like a good thing right? I mean… Tiktok has made it easier for new artists to blow up, and streaming services like Spotify work with them to push out the popular Tiktok songs on their own platforms. One YLHS mustang, Isabella Smith (12), comments that “the music industry has definitely had a huge shift in marketing due to tiktok’s algorithm. Even though it introduces new artists, it is more ‘trend’ based as opposed to appreciating the different aspects of the artist’s work.” When people talk about Tiktok, they love to rant about the dangers of the algorithm and the endless scrolling, but no one talks about the dangers it poses to the music artists and fandom itself. Even though it is easier for smaller artists to blow up, it is harder for them to gain a fandom as people only know them from one clip of one song. It’s kind of sad, actually. Imagine working so hard only on your music to find out that people only care about you because of that one part of your song that has a catchy hook.

One of my favorite artists, Steve Lacy, is a good example of this. If you don’t know, Steve catapulted into stardom with his song “Bad Habits”, which blew up on… you guessed it… TIKTOK! On the surface, this seems like a good thing as Steve is very talented, and “Bad Habits” is an amazing song. During his tour, however, everything went downhill. Steve realized that people only came to his concert for that one song. A clip of one of those concerts had gone viral, and in the clip, Steve pointed the mic to the audience to invite them to sing the next verse, yet no one knew the lyrics. Many people on the internet suspect that this is because the Tiktok fans bought the tickets faster than his diehard fans, which makes this event even sadder because I didn’t get to purchase the tickets on time and I’m still salty about that. 

Believe it or not, this is not my only complaint about Tiktok’s influence on the music industry. I hate to sound like a boomer, but I think the reason why people think that modern music sucks is because of Tiktok (just to be clear, I don’t think modern music sucks. I am just bringing up an opinion as an example). Back in the 80’s, there was still plenty of bad music, but these songs go unnoticed because they can’t get popular without supporting apps like Tiktok. It seems like old music was better quality, but it’s actually just because music was less accessible to the general public so people only noticed the good ones. Tiktok, however, doesn’t care if the music is good or not. As long as it is catchy, it will sell. This is causing many artists to make songs appealing to the tiktok algorithm, and more and more artists are losing their musical identity. They know that Tiktok is their only way to land a spot on the streaming charts, even if it means they have to give up a part of themselves. And even if they aren’t making music catering to Tiktok, there is still a high chance that these artists will promote their songs on Tiktok, which ties back to my first point on how they might only gain a five second recognition.

Obviously, this is all just my opinion, and you can disagree with me. My perspective of the situation might be completely different than yours, and I am open to hearing other people’s take on this. I know I said a lot of negative things about Tiktok, but at the end of the day, I still jam to songs like “Mary On a Cross” and “Play Date”. I am not saying that listening to Tiktok music is a bad thing, or else I would be a huge hypocrite. Music is supposed to bring you joy, so you should listen to whoever you want in whatever way you want.