How Tiktok has Changed Music

After TikTok bought Muscial.ly in 2018, it almost seemed as though it had become an entirely different app. The type of content changed, with more humor, dancing, and relatable content. However, even though the trademark lip-syncing of Musical.ly did not carry through, both apps rely heavily on music. With the strict rules on YouTube for using copyrighted music and few mainstream artists releasing anything due to the pandemic, TikTok slowly became a place where people went to discover new songs. When a song has the potential to become a dance, or has a line many can relate to, a trend spawns. Such trends are usually not directly related to the song, but instead, encapsulate its emotions. Regardless, the sheer amount of times an average TikTok user hears the song is bound to translate into millions of streams. Even well-established artists are using this to their advantage by pre-planning trends to their songs, creating hashtags such as #PinkVenomChallenge and #TSAntiHeroChallenge.

As a result, appealing to TikTok users holds an extreme power in influencing music artists' decisions—including their release schedules. Just three months ago, Bebe Rhexa put out an unreleased song from 2017, titled "I'm Good (Blue)," just because it was trending on TikTok. Meghan Trainor posted the music video for her song, "Title," seven years after its release for the same reason. Because of the influence TikTok has on a song's success, it puts immense pressure on the artists. Halsey, a singer, posted on TikTok that their record label won't let them release a song "unless [the label] can fake a viral moment on TikTok." Another artist, Charli XCX, said her management forced her to make eight TikToks in a week. It seems that nowadays, labels believe the only way songs can gain popularity is through TikTok. This means artists have little say over their decisions. Instead of releasing music they like, singers are forced to only put out songs that appeal to the app's algorithm.

Some artists even base their entire brand on TikTok. "I'll make a song, and people even in the YouTube comments will be like, 'Oh let's hope TikTok doesn't ruin this one,'" popular artist Doja Cat said. Doja is a prime example of how TikTok can turn a singer into a celebrity. After a dance to her song "Say So" went viral on TikTok, she leveraged the app's power and now has songs with over a billion streams. Although she is a rare case, this sort of thing happens on smaller scales all the time. YouTuber Dani Calleiro says she used to pay the bills for her husband, Emmyn (of the band Games We Play), since he couldn't make any money as a musician. However, after his TikTok introducing his song "I Hope You're Happy" got over ten million views, "every single major record label hit him up." Dani explains, "His life is changing before my eyes. He's getting offered to tour this entire year." With success stories like these, it's no wonder the music genre on TikTok has been so incredibly saturated these past few years.

But TikTok has also impacted the style of songs released, most notably in three ways:

First, to appeal to TikTok, many artists are using more casual language in their songs. In Leah Kate's "10 Things I Hate About You," she sings, "You gross me out, now I've got the ick" as a reference to a common phrase on TikTok of "the ick." However, strangely enough, these types of songs end up becoming more infamous than famous. When a TikToker made a song based on the "they're a ten but…" trend, her video garnered millions of views, but the comments were flooded with negativity. One comment reads, "The…joke died the moment that song was written" and another, "Every time somebody makes a song based on the TikTok trend my soul dies a little." Similar to the idea that jokes aren't funny if they're explained, trends are deemed "cringey" once they're referenced in mainstream media. However, negative attention is still attention, and it increases engagement on apps such as TikTok.

Second, songs have also gotten progressively shorter. Intros, outros, and bridges are becoming rare, with most songs only having two verses and a chorus. As music commentator, Todd in the Shadows points out, songs on TikTok "[are] literally background music. You don't need more than two ideas." Artists usually only fully flesh out a song's chorus, since that's all it needs to go viral on TikTok. Personally, I feel like that takes away from a song's value. For example, when singer Dove Cameron released her song "Breakfast," I was a little disappointed. Although there was nothing wrong with the song itself, there wasn't much else to it besides the hook she promoted on TikTok for two months prior to the song's release. More and more, it seems acceptable for songs to only be known for a line or two. They don't even have to be all that good, they just need to have fifteen seconds that are catchy. Artists, in turn, don't bother adding more to the song, which decreases its length and quality.

Third, TikTok has also led to sped up versions of songs being extremely popular (however, many users point out this is a genre called "nightcore" that has been around since the 2000s). These versions not only cater to the increasingly shorter attention spans of Gen Z, but can also encapsulate the "vibe" of a song, with the higher pitches creating a cheerful and dopamine inducing sound. But despite boosting streams, this could also have a slightly negative effect. I myself am a victim of looking up songs I typically hear sped up, only to be extremely put off by the comparatively slow pace of the originals. YouTuber Haley Pham wrote in a TikTok, "ok but is tik tok ruining normal music for anyone else? Why do I prefer these high pitched, sped up versions over the original songs." Although this hasn't yet infiltrated the charts, we already see both TikTok users and artists putting out sped up remixes. It will be interesting to see how this trend impacts the music industry in the long run.

But despite all that, there is no formula to blow up on TikTok. YouTuber Danny Gonzalez posted a video titled "I Made A Viral TikTok Song," where he utilized all the patterns he noticed from popular TikTok songs (e.g. quirky lyrics, references to dancing) and created his own. And the result? Unfortunately, it did not reach TikTok's standards for "virality." I think part of the reason for this is because it wasn't original enough. Often, writing songs for the sole purpose of blowing up on TikTok might be seen as "trying too hard" and subvert its goal. All trending songs are completely different from each other, as well as the trends associated with them. People are constantly looking for something new and, despite its flaws, TikTok is the perfect place for that.

by KATIE LIN