By Rhianna Goodall

The insane popularity of social media platform TikTok is forcing the music industry to change, it’s not enough to rely on your loyal fanbase anymore. Nowadays, a new release must have potential for virality to propel the artist into the charts. It’s obvious that TikTok has become the dominant music promotion outlet in the industry, but is it a double-edged sword?

The holographic, cowboy hat-wearing elephant in the room is, of course, Beyoncé’s new country anthem, ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’. Queen Bey’s tune is currently sitting at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has 848.3k videos under the official sound on TikTok, with millions of views across the board. The common theme amongst these ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’ backed videos is the viral dance that has become synonymous with the song itself. TikTok dances act as a self-sufficient promotional tool, allowing for floods of user-generated content, where payday can be had by all.

Beyoncé’s success with ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’ comes at the perfect time, in the wake of the Universal Music Group (UMG) and TikTok drama. The two giants couldn’t come to an agreement over music licensing and so, UMG made the risky decision of pulling all its owned songs from the platform, eliminating titans of the industry like Taylor Swift and K-pop sensation BTS. Especially during this era of oversaturation due to social media, wiping out strong competitors is definitely beneficial for the likes of Beyoncé whose new single was released with Columbia Records.

Although money does make the world go round, TikTok’s algorithmic music market can also be used for good. Cat Janice rose to critical acclaim through her upbeat TikTok hit, ‘Dance You Outta My Head’, the singer’s final release which she dedicated to her son before she sadly passed away after battling sarcoma cancer. Cat created a call-to-action TikTok (now at 12.3 million views) explaining that she was leaving all of the rights to her songs to her son so that he could have any profits Cat’s music makes. Users quickly rallied to push the track to maximise its reach and therefore, monetary value. ‘Dance You Outta My Head’ has garnered over 20.2 million streams on Spotify and peaked at no. 1 on Billboard’s TikTok Top 50 in February.

TikTok hype leads to guaranteed success, however it’s not always the more hype the better. The user engagement economy is constantly changing, so it’s crucial for artists to find the sweet spot between scarcity value and leaving listeners waiting too long on a new release.

Singer Lola Young is the epitome of the latter. Ahead of the release of her debut album, ‘My Mind Wanders and Sometimes Leaves Completely’ Lola Young found TikTok stardom as a snippet of her song ‘Don’t Hate Me’ gained traction on the platform last year.  

But after using the same snippet over and over with no sign of a release, her followers got tired quickly. Naturally, the comment section expressed their frustration.

So, my advice to any upcoming TikTok artists that want to get the most out of the hype is Carpe Diem baby.

It’s not just new music that can find its feet on TikTok, older songs can circle back into popularity via TikTok trends. More recently, the dance classic ‘Perfect’ by Mason and Princess Superstar. Originally released in 2007, the track unexpectedly re-entered into the Official Singles chart peaking at 26 (not bad for a song that’s 17 years old!) thanks to the release of Saltburn, TikTok and 2000s nostalgia. The same treatment fell to Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’, which entered ‘TikTok’s viral 50’ twenty-three years after its original release in 2001.

The issue with TikTok fame isn’t only that it’s typically short-lived but that most ‘mainstream’ artists don’t seem to be on board with promoting their music on the app. Charli XCX and Halsey have expressed their distain that music labels expect them to promote their music on TikTok. Artistic freedom is incredibly important in producing music, to capture the artist’s authentic voice however, TikTok users never rest! Leaking unreleased tracks without the artist’s permission is a sure-fire way to take the art away from the artist. Ariana Granda suffered the ‘leak’ phenomenon after her unreleased 90s-inspired track ‘Fantasize’ went totally viral on TikTok. Ariana called out the theft of her song in an interview with Zach Sang saying, “Thieves! Pirates! Crooks! Illegal. I’ll pay you more to put it away, like, to get it back.”

TikTok has its advantages when it comes to sales and virality, but are they worth putting artist autonomy at risk? It seems that the positives outweigh the negatives. TikTok brings success in the music industry slightly closer to the hands of independent artists and maybe its not a bad thing to shake up music marketing! I’d like to see the return of MTV Music as promotion outlet king, but for now, TikTok will have to do.