my take on tiktok in the music industry & why I'm currently avoiding it...

unless you’ve been living under a rock, there is no doubt that you’re aware of the worldwide mega app tiktok that has simply dominated any other social platform. in fact, at the end of last year, it was reported that the social video-based app had reached over 2.6 billion downloads worldwide which in essence, would mean almost 30% of the world’s population have once in their lifetime downloaded tiktok. due to this roaring ongoing success, it’s no surprise that the industry has glorified the platform and in some senses, made it an essential part of the new age of gaining traction from fans, and major labels.

from an honest standpoint, I completely understand the desire to use tiktok as an emerging artist and there is such a positive outcome for many, a perfect example recently being a friend of mine richard fairlie dropping a snippet of himself performing an english rendition of “bluebird”, the opening theme of anime series naruto. this led to over 2.8 million views and over a quarter million likes on this sole video and as i write this, the full version richard dropped today on spotify currently sits comfortably on new music friday uk.

CREDITS: Kennedy Tideswell

however, here’s my issue with the way things are currently being led and the driven direction i see the industry is currently heading. quite like the way that streaming platforms overtook physical format music and the digital world skyrocketed, to me it seems like tiktok is having the same natural effect and is valued much more than how well a song actually performs. multiple artists have spoken out in disregard of management demanding push on tiktok, from the likes of halsey, charlie xcx, and doja cat all taking to social media to disapprove of the continuous flooding requests to maintain promotion and content which as I can imagine starts to feel tiring and forceful? I completely understand that platforms like this are used as a way to promote and gain awareness toward upcoming releases but it now just feels in some ways the actual release compliments the profile built on the app and takes away the whole reasoning behind why it became useful to use in the first place. to the major majority of artists, their work is an art form, something cherished and special it will always hold extreme personal meaning, and the forceful nature of being ordered to push and push on a platform simply to make ends meet for record labels’ expectations seems to takes that away, it begins to feel like artists are but a product selling yet another product which to me just doesn’t sit right.

I’d be lying if I said i haven’t used tiktok before, it’s never been a continuous daily wave of videos I often tend to throw one up every month or two just to test the waters, but here’s why stopped using it. I feel at this stage of my musical career I am still new to the industry and somewhat feel I’m allowed to experiment and make mistakes with my art. when I regularly used to scroll it would affect my writing, i’d find myself trying to write catchy melodic pop music with somewhat generic lyricism without realising which I want to add isn’t an issue whatsoever for general speaking, it makes great music and clearly off social patterns performs well on the app, it’s just not what i’m currently trying to achieve. I always find songwriting as my release, anything I’m feeling i want to create meaning towards it and turn it into something to express to others, having that influence and continuously seeing trending songs really threw me off my general goal for writing and i think it’s very easy for us as artists to be influenced by that, as were made to feel it’s numbers & insights that make a song deemed successful. I’m extremely doubtful this will change for the foreseeable future yet I think it’s extremely refreshing seeing worldwide known artists use their platform to speak out on the issue and i do feel more need to make awareness of the ongoing situation.

to summarise, I want to be clear that in no way am I speaking down towards tiktok or any individuals who use the platform, I truly do believe it’s a wise decision towards kickstarting a career and if things are to stay the same, i myself will have to venture back to posting to gain any form of attention from labels, I just think it’s seen more as a priority than anything else and it shouldn’t be like that, it takes away the sole purpose of creating music and feeds into the corporate business module withheld by label bosses, make a song, sell the product, continue to sell the product with content, successful? If so let’s forget about that last song and make another one then we repeat the process.