The increase in TikTok’s popularity over the past five years has made sharing, connecting, and spreading awareness about certain issues easier than ever. Movements supporting rights for women, people of color and those subjected to injustice within society have a tool to reach audiences worldwide.
TikTok’s powerful algorithm supplies users with content that they subconsciously crave. The app is typically most known for the trends that it produces, whether it’s dance, music, or fashion. These tend to be simple to follow, offering users a sense of belonging to a wider group.
Due to the short-form content on TikTok, the trends are typically accompanied by a single song snippet. The renowned popularity of TikTok trends has thus created a platform for musicians to achieve recognition for their music.
TikTok has given musicians an alternate form of marketing, the platform provides them with the ability to reach over a billion users in one place.
They can showcase snippets of new music to get ahead on their marketing plan. This strategy is commonly used to promote music before it is released. Whether it is an intentional marketing strategy or a gift from the algorithm.
The rise of TikTok has aided up-and-coming musicians in boosting their new music. MRC Data’s research (provider for music and entertainment data) found that 75 percent of TikTok users say they discover new artists through TikTok, 63 percent of TikTok users saying they’ve found new music through Tiktok.
Many musicians have caught onto this new phenomenon on TikTok. Showing snippets of songs which market better than the full tune.
A musician known as Grimson expresses his frustration with being a musician in 2024. He discusses how TikTok has changed the way people relate to and perceive music. Users are inundated with blips of audio and given only a few seconds of a song to then decide whether they like the music or not.
Grimson goes on to say that they “started writing songs where I knew people weren’t going to listen to the whole thing, so I put all of my effort into one chorus,” and “I don’t think I would’ve written a song like that if I hadn’t have spent so much time on TikTok,” he says.
Lizzy McAlpin, another artist, performed at the Olympia in Dublin in October. Her song ‘Ceilings’ appeared on her second studio album ‘Five Seconds Flat’, released in April 2022.
The song famously blew up on TikTok, forming a trend of people running and dramatically lip-syncing to the heart-wrenching lyrics. The song is an ode to the beauty of fleeting moments as McAlpine reminisces about a past relationship.
In the Irish Times, they wrote a review of the concert on Halloween, and they noted that during her ‘Older’ tour, ‘Ceilings’ held the middle spot on the setlist. The duration of this tour was when the trend was at its peak virality.
As McAlpine noticed fans fleeing after they had their fill of the song they essentially came for, she changed the order of the setlist. The struggle to gain a solid fanbase when many are solely interested in the song that they have discovered through TikTok is a real issue. However, this time around, her fan base is much more devoted to her entire discography, allowing McAlpine to step away from her label as a “TikTok sensation”.
The idea of obsessing over a thirty-second clip of a song seems bizarre when reflecting on the old era of music. When the only way to discover new music was to buy the vinyl and listen to the album in full.
The music industry is changing, and certainly how we discover, perceive, and relate to new music. Although the use of TikTok comes with many benefits, there is undoubtedly a lot of concern for musicians and what this means for future careers.