TikTok is taking over

Illustrated by @geegebee

When Tik Tok first came out as Music.ly in 2014, no one was prepared for the influence the app would have on the music industry. But here we are, eight years later with Tik Tok having the utmost pull on what music is going viral. This of course has been great for smaller artists, who are able to blow up with little to no platform.

Traditionally, signing with a record label was a given. With the rise of the internet came the opportunity for music to be promoted to a wider audience, where the artist would create the music and the label would take care of the business and promotion. But, that has changed.

Before talking about Tik Tok itself, looking at the influence of the internet as a whole can help us to fully understand where Tik Tok’s rise has come from, and what factors have already changed the industry.

Seems like a basic story, the internet came around, we developed international connections where people could share their music from anywhere in the world. Instead of paying for advertising in radio, magazines, posters or billboards, artists could share their music on social media. It worked; it brought us Shawn Mendes, Justin Bieber, Skrillex, The Weeknd, Arctic Monkeys, the list goes on.

Back then, and still largely now, the way music deals would work is that a record label would approach an artist and, in exchange for the full rights of any music released by them, the label would pay an advance and give them somewhere around 15% of the money earned from their music (i.e., Spotify streams).

This advance typically can range from $50k-$350k, which sounds great as artists need money to live and invest in their music. The catch-22 is that this money, as an advance, is essentially a loan. Which yeah, if an artist absolutely blows up, the advance is something you can cover. But, (because there’s always a but), paying it back can be a struggle. Now is a good time to remember that artists were typically making only around 15% of profits from their music. This money would then go back to the very label which took the other 85%.

By this point we’re all pretty aware of the struggle's artists face with record labels, some examples of famous battles between label and artist would be Ke$ha and Taylor Swift. These musicians are only two of the many who have been taken for granted by labels set up to help them thrive, that have instead fallen prey to exploitation.

Things, however, have begun to change. Every time the internet has some new significant addition or development, things tend to speed up. We all saw the effects of Tik Tok’s quick video structure, from ‘micro-trends’ lasting days, to the speed of virality, to what the app has done to any user's attention-span: everything is consumed at a rapid pace so much more quickly than pre-internet times where “trends” would last years.

Today, artists are blowing-up overnight. Someone can release a snippet of an audio and if people like it, they will listen. Unlike on any other music app, where we see how many views/listens an artist has, generally with Tik Tok music unless you look for it, you don’t see how popular an audio is, we aren’t biased against small artists because we don’t really know where the clips of music are coming from. Short snippets mean we get to listen to the catchy bits, but not like a radio where you’re stuck listening to songs you’ve never heard of. Instead, the song grows on us slowly, until we go outside the app to listen.

Putting music on Tik Tok works for new artists, and it works really well. Olivia Rodrigo and PinkPantheress are two of the biggest examples of artists whose fame began at Tik Tok, but there are so many others.

Today, independent artists hold a noticeable share of the music industry. While record labels still hold the large majority, it doesn’t change that competition is growing. With unlimited access to potential artists, anyone can upload their music, which means more people are doing so. Audience attention however, isn’t without limits. Tik Tok blew up around the time when Covid-19 was holding back artists from touring, which was many artists' main revenue stream. Essentially since 2020, record labels have grown a hunger for new and upcoming artists.

Labels are now getting into ‘bidding wars’, fighting to get artists just as they are blowing up. This means artists are getting better deals such as partnerships offering a 50/50 split, or record labels switching exclusive rights to artists' work, to a licence lasting 12-15 years. This is a significant change, and certainly a shift for the better, but is it enough?

Many artists still don’t think it’s good enough, and there have been growing movements of ‘bedroom pop’ and independently released music. The thing that holds more artists back are the crazy deals that these labels have with our good friend, Spotify.

Spotify has a ridiculous influence on music today which is a whole other rabbit-hole but overall, the algorithm dictates who is promoted, from personal ‘discover weekly’ playlists, public playlists with thousands of followers, ads for those with Spotify Free, and constant recommendations. It is important to consider the fact that Spotify was designed for record labels, which means working with it as a solo artist definitely adds some difficulties.

The music industry is in a shambles. Whether these deals are an absolute rip-off is up to the individual. While giving artists the chance to focus on their art itself, labels can also throw artists into an endless cycle of working and producing until burning out. It’s a very tricky thing; seeing how much attention we pay to music, we should also start to focus on how these labels work and how they treat the artists we idolise so heavily.