{"id":939811,"date":"2025-01-17T17:49:22","date_gmt":"2025-01-17T14:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=939811"},"modified":"2025-01-17T17:49:22","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T14:49:22","slug":"musics-tiktokalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=939811","title":{"rendered":"Music\u2019s TikTokalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Columns<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Music\u2019s TikTokalypse<\/h1>\n
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On January 19, the United States will ban TikTok. What happens to music?<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Kieran Press-Reynolds<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Graphic by Chris Panicker<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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Scrolling TikTok now feels like walking into the cafeteria on the last day of high school. At one table, influencers offer their handles on other platforms, telling people how to keep in touch. At another, users share best-hits montages of TikTok over the years like they\u2019re flicking through yearbooks: the TikTok Rizz Party to Charli D\u2019Amelio to the hyper-energized kid wonder Topher. Others remain in denial, blithely posting memes like they\u2019re not about to say goodbye. I\u2019ve been in denial myself, thinking TikTok would be bought or the ruling slashed before the U.S. government bans it on Sunday, January 19. Unless there\u2019s a hail mary\u2014which seems extremely unlikely with the Supreme Court upholding the ban\u2014it\u2019s over. TikTok\u2019s time in America is up. In an instant, thousands of creators will be searching for new ways to maintain their livelihoods and fanbases they\u2019ve spent years building.<\/p>\n

Enriching or eroding brains, empowering \u201cdigital creatives,\u201d or spewing forth slop and sludge: Whether you despise or delight in TikTok, its banning will hit music culture hard. Over the last seven years, the app has rewired the industry: squishing tracks into frantic blips of hooky intensity, convincing labels to sign one-off viral stars, spawning a cottage industry of sped-up remixes. It\u2019s drastically changed the way artists gain traction and promote themselves. Spotify\u2019s \u201cViral 50\u201d chart basically reflects whatever\u2019s popping on TikTok in a given week. So what happens when TikTok disappears? Does the music industry instantly revert to the prehistoric epoch of 2017\u2014will Snapchat<\/em> become the hottest major label scouting ground? Will popstars remember how to write bridges?<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are massively panicking. I don\u2019t know anybody who\u2019s like, \u2018This will be fine,\u2019\u201d says Olivia Shalhoup, the CEO of Amethyst Collab, a digital marketing agency that\u2019s worked with stars like Trippie Redd and Amin\u00e9. \u201cMost of the panic comes from the uncertainty\u2014there\u2019s no clear path to replicate [TikTok] followers. A lot of artists are losing their biggest audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Juuls,<\/span><\/p>\n
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The Anatomy of a TikTok Hit<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

As usually happens whenever Big Tech gets its tendrils around the music industry, the ones who\u2019ll suffer most are indie musicians. The avenue for DIY artists to blow up from their bedrooms will evaporate. \u201cIt\u2019s going to become a less democratized landscape,\u201d Shalhoup says. Other shortform hubs like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts will absorb many TikTok refugees, but they don\u2019t have the same hyper-charged music discovery algorithm that propels niche experiments and soon-to-be hits as opposed to catalog and already popular songs. The app\u2019s user interface was built around musical trends, whereas Instagram and YouTube want to push viewers to click on creators\u2019 feeds or longform videos. I can\u2019t think of any musician who blew up via Reels or Shorts, but I can name dozens of TikTok-driven breakouts stars and viral smashes.<\/p>\n

The Spanish rapper Bb trickz, who appeared on Charli XCX\u2019s BRAT<\/em> remix album and has racked up over 2.6 million TikTok followers posting fit checks and dances, credits the platform with helping her rise and says it\u2019s a special platform because \u201cgenuine content works.\u201d She\u2019s in denial about it getting banned, but thinks that if it does happen, it\u2019ll hurt rising artists who crave a shot at being known. She can\u2019t see herself switching to post on another shortform platform: \u201cNahhh, I hate Reels.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Chances are, the ban won\u2019t severely disrupt the bottom line of big labels\u2014we saw that when Universal Music Group pulled its music from TikTok last year and suffered no damage. But majors and legacy artists will still lose revenue because of the loss of TikTok catalog marketing, the mechanism by which old songs like Fleetwood Mac\u2019s \u201cDreams\u201d resurface and go viral.<\/p>\n

TikTok dominates the promo game to the point where digital-first agencies like Amethyst say 80-85% of their marketing revolves around the app. There\u2019s simply no other platform that converts curious passersby to diehards so well. Instagram functions more like a landing page nowadays, hurling content not to randos but to people who already follow the creator. \u201cI have yet to see an audio trend take off on Reels specifically,\u201d says Shalhoup.<\/p>\n

TikTok ads\u2014whether targeted promos to get people to buy concert tickets, or labels orchestrating trends by sneakily paying influencers to use certain songs\u2014snag stray scrollers way better than ads on other apps. \u201cThey\u2019re probably the most effective ad platform at converting fans and discovery,\u201d says Joe Aboud, who, as founder of the music consultancy 444Sounds and a former marketing manager at Atlantic Records, has worked with a bevy of artists and TikTokers like Dixie D\u2019Amelio. \u201cLabels and artists have become a little bit reliant on TikTok, using it as a crutch,\u201d says Aboud. But creatives and companies alike are about to get a wake-up call when the app\u2019s banned and a massive void rips open with nothing to replace it.<\/p>\n

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Huge pools of digital marketing cash will need to be reallocated, but to where? Shalhoup bets YouTube Shorts will take over as the hotspot for scouting and promoting artists. (This seems wild to me as someone who associates Shorts with a migraine-inducing flood of brainrot.) Aboud is actually excited, imagining this could spark a \u201ccreative renaissance\u201d where dethroning TikTok means artists can stress less about tailoring their songs solely to thrive on the app. \u201cIf TikTok is your only strategy, you\u2019re probably freaking out right now,\u201d he laughs. \u201cThe industry used to discover talent at bars, A&Rs were scouting artists organically\u2014there were no metrics to rely on outside of, \u2018Is the fan into this? Does the artist have a real je ne sais quoi?\u2019 It may be the return of true artist development.\u201d Aboud envisions a rise in grassroots promo and digital realms\u2014Discord channels, email and text marketing\u2014that operate far from the fickle algorithms run by Big Tech.<\/p>\n

Chaos and confusion will consume the industry in the immediate aftermath of the ban. Creators will test alternatives, like the Chinese-owned Xiaohongshu (but who knows how long that will last given the circumstances behind the imminent TikTok ban). Developers will puke out new similar apps. Others might cling to TikTok using VPNs. Many pundits thought the app would still be accessible to users who had already downloaded it from the app store, but TikTok now says it\u2019ll shut off the platform for everyone in the U.S. starting Jan 19. The worst-case scenario, which seems highly unrealistic, is that ByteDance annihilates every U.S. account and video\u2014a complete wiping of the memelog, the Fried Library of Alexandria deleted in a click. Just in case, Shalhoup has started backing up her clients\u2019 videos, using a third-party service to download watermark-free files so they can rebuild on another app.<\/p>\n

As someone who\u2019s been hooked on TikTok since the \u201cRenegade\u201d days, the biggest loss feels like the demolition of the platform\u2019s anarchic, often wondrous virality machine. No other platform has trampolined so many unknown freaks and aural oddities in so short a time: The bedroom\u2019n\u2019bass of PinkPantheress, the gothic gibberish of Yeat\u2019s \u201cG\u00ebt Busy,\u201d hemlocke springs\u2019 theater-kid odysseys, the next-gen horrorcore of sigilkore. Sure, the frenetic yet ultra-precise algorithm\u2014perfectly calibrated for carving little communities out of the internet ether\u2014had negative consequences, boosting some pure slop. But the genius redeems the garbage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: https:\/\/pitchfork.com\/thepitch\/music-tiktokalypse\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Columns Music\u2019s TikTokalypse On January 19, the United States will ban TikTok. What happens to music? By Kieran Press-Reynolds January 17, 2025 Graphic by Chris Panicker Scrolling TikTok now feels like walking into the cafeteria on the last day of high school. At one table, influencers offer their handles on other platforms, telling people how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":939812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-939811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-pitchfork-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=939811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/939812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=939811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=939811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=939811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}