I’m not on tiktok so I’m not sure how it works but so many times I stumble across an artist, like what I hear, go to their Spotify to find that one song has 10 million streams while the rest have like 50k

Then I find out their song has blown up on tiktok

Firstly I feel sad because it means I have the same taste in music as Tiktok kids, but then I feel like the artist must feel like they are about to blow but these kids move on so fast that they get left in the dust

Is this good for the music industry or slowly killing it off?

@DAVIDP

bad for everything

my brother how the f*** is that in any way different to looking up a song you heard on the radio

it's honestly a mixture of both, tik tok is great because it gives artists' the ability to pop off at just about any moment with the proper sound bite + trend, this is obviously a double edged sword because one song could get a bunch of streams and the rest don't get any as you said @op

however, im sure people have found artists through tik tok and became fans of them through the app regardless + it puts them on the map for a strain of people in general regardless - i personally don't use the app because i find that hearing certain parts of a song over and over again when a trend is at it's apex becomes very annoying and it kind of ruins the song in a sense (plus my attention span is slaughtered enough by default anyways)

anyways ye, that's my spiel

bro you clearly be on tiktok so your 14 so kindly stfu and don’t call me brother

How is it anything like radio

i also do think Tik Tok has become unfortunately influential in how music is made in the sense that it really does seem like artists' may or may not design songs in hopes that it'll trend on Tik Tok too, Toosi Slide is a perfect example of this (although stans will tell you completely otherwise)

Yeh I’m with you

But then I suppose artist now only focus on making that catchy loop music without any substance because they are trying to get that tiktok hit

But then again I seem to fall for it because I like catchy melodies

yeah made a mention of that in the second post, it really is a bit of a double edged sword man, it sucks but it is what it is

the market is so saturated with everyone making music that if you're looking to pop off you kind of have to appeal to what is out there, and currently that's catchy loops that these niggas can lip sync or dance to, iirc i think it was like this when Vine was around too

The market is def over saturated, so much so that it’s hard to find artists that sound genuine if you get what I mean

Like people more so making music to pop off than making music for the love of it, and trying to create something genuinely different

Most of the songs I see people use are mid so maybe it’s bad

Very bad

im not not tiktok but how is having one song blow up any different to a song getting popular on the radio idgi

apologies if im misunderstanding ur question or the framing but whats the difference ? apart from the cycles between songs being shorter but just indicative of the times not tiktok or music

tiktok hits can be compared to radio hits forsure lol

often on top 40 on the radio, only that one artists song gets played, none of the rest of their catalogue, and they're also soon forgotten after

and tiktok exposes more people to more music, thats always a positive.

Good

I might have come in too hot then bro lol my bad

I don’t know I just see radio as different because it’s all label pushed and I’ve always just kind of seen radio as the enemy for whatever reason

Tiktok is probably a bit more organic in a sense but I don’t think the majority of listeners will deep dive an artists music off tiktok, more just that one song then forget about them

Leading to more saturation as they just look for the next catchy sound bit

But radio will play all of an artists singles once they get into rotation

Tiktok is just luck of the draw, one song pops off and then that artist can disappear forever

All good I mean yeah that’s what I’m saying it’s like a slightly more organic radio I guess

Payola was always a thing & is still a thing

Chasing catchy sounds was a thing, remains a thing

I dunno if it has changed that much

Well same thing with some of the tiktok stars, iann dior types still have a strong following based off it.

And 1-hit-wonders on the radio invented luck of the draw & disappear

Bad it never allows a musician(singer/rapper) to grow so they have to come out the gate fake developed already. Won't even be a mad if a musician hides in a cave and develops his or herself musically before ever releasing a song.

personal listening wise

tiktok is good at putting people on to stuff they will like. if ur interested in drum and bass, for example, and interact with that type of content, u will probably be recommended some drum and bass u haven't heard before and it will probably be pretty quality.

It's a rlly powerful music discovery tool, if you know how to use it.

large-scale wise

tiktok being a huge factor in what does and doesn't do numbers means pop music has to cater to tiktok. That means focusing on only one part of the song, being gimmicky, using lots of forced quotables, etc. That's not really that good, I think we get worse overall pop music bc of this.

On the other hand, tiktok exposes people to a lot of sounds they wouldn't have heard otherwise. Sometimes it turns out a lot of people actually like these genres, but were just never properly put in contact with them. Look at Pinkpantheress bringing dnb/garage to the mainstream. When music is catering to tiktok, it does the s*** i talked about above, but also taps into these "tiktok genres" to try and appeal to the userbase. Usually, these previously underexposed music genres are pretty interesting, and when mainstream music tries to incorporate them, we get some pretty cool musical innovation.

personal note

I think my favorite thing about tiktok's impact on music is how legit anything can become a tiktok hit if it sounds good enough. Some random guy playing piano in a melancholy way, a reharmonization of the spongebob spongebob patrick meme, etc. There's negative effects on music when people try and chase tiktok success, but I really do like how tiktok kinda lets good music rise to the top. I mean we see classic rap songs chart years after release, sometimes higher than they've ever charted, just cus tiktok. I think that's cool.

In terms of music consumption the conversation is definitely interesting

Because while TikTok is giving a greater number of creators a chance to get their work heard and trending, I think people scrolling the app for hours on end is directly tied to the decrease in music consumption we've seen since the pandemic started

Before people would play music and scroll IG or Twitter or do something else with music in the background maybe and now they can't as they scroll TikTok and watch short form videos that include music snippets which I'm not sure are counting as whole streams