Individual Commentary - Social Media and Music Streaming
Jaeli Rose
10 October, 2020
Article: Tatiana Cirisano, "The Real TikTok Challenge? Turning Influencer
Status into Hitmaker Clout"
Megan Thee Stallion Savage - SAYGRACE Boys Ain't Shit - Jack
Harlow WHATS POPPIN - SAINt JHN Roses (Imanbek Remix) -
Lizzo Truth Hurts - Lil Nas X Old Town Road - DaBaby
Rockstar - The Weeknd Blinding Lights - Doja Cat
Say So - Drake Toosie Slide - BENEE Supalonely
This is only a short list of the songs which owe their popularity, at
least in part, to TikTok. The platform, made up of short videos set to
catchy songs or quirky audio clips, has dramatically altered the social
media landscape in a matter of months. I don’t have an account, yet I can
quote viral TikToks, and my current playlists are littered with songs
trendy on the app. This is the first social media platform I have watched
“blow up”—its predecessors (Facebook, Instagram, Vine) came about when I
was a kid. Observing Tiktok’s remarkable growth, and its immediate impact
on pop culture, is fascinating. So is its influence on the music industry.
This is where my partners, Audrey and Trevor, and I intend to focus our
digital exploration: What role does TikTok play in our music choices? And
more specifically, to what extent have prominent creators on TikTok
influenced the popularity of various music artists? To better understand
this dynamic, we will use both qualitative and quantitative methods of
research. The former will be made up of interviews with popular TikTok
creators (who we know personally), as well as people working in the social
media and music industries. The latter will be a comparison of data from
TikTok (on viral songs, and dates famous creators first used them) and
Soundcharts.com, which provides information on the rates at which songs
are streamed over time; this will allow us to trace a direct link (or lack
thereof) between TikTok influencers and the popularity of various songs.
We hypothesize that there will be a clear connection between the two, but
that famous creators are not gatekeepers for songs going viral on TikTok.
What we cannot predict is the role creators view themselves as playing in
the music industry, and whether there is a disconnect between that
perception and reality. For this Individual Commentary, I have thus chosen
Tatiana Cirisano’s article for billboard (of the Billboard Hot
100), “The Real TikTok Challenge? Turning Influencer Status Into Hitmaker
Clout,” because it discusses the relationship between influencer music
choices, record label marketing strategies, and the democratic nature of
TikTok, where it is possible to go from anonymous to viral to famous in
just a few days.
From the process by which TikTok-ers go viral, to the new marketing
strategies adopted by record companies, Cirisano articulates many of the
ways in which the new app has transfroemed the music industry. The article
is based around interviews with Charli D’Amelio (the 16 year old mega-star
of TikTok), Addison Rae Easterling (the platforms second most followed
influencer), Joe Izzi and Justin Greenberg (WME Talent agents), and Tarek
al-Hamdouni (RCA Reccords Senior VP of digital marketing), each providing
a different lense of the TikTok-music dynamic. Cirisano establishes
TikTok’s most notable feature—the strength of the platform’s For You Page,
which “doesn’t factor in users’ follower counts, which further
democratizes and diversifies the feed” (Cirisano)—as central in its
ability to propel creators to “instant fame” (Ibid). These stars, which
the app produces, put out content using songs of their choice, which then
reach an incredibly large audience. And that audience is encouraged to
engage in those posts, by copying the dance (or trend), with the same
background audio, further disseminating that song. The process does not
stop there: al-Hamdouni of RCA Records reports a direct connection between
popular TikTok songs and plays on music streaming platforms. In this way,
“the app’s influencers are beccoming powerful music industry players”
(Ibid). Cirisano writes that both D’Amelio and Easterling recognize their
role as “tastemaker[s]” (Ibid), and the impact their music choices can
have on the artists’ popularity. That choice, however, is not
random—influencers are regularly paid by record labels to feature
different songs in their posts, and artists are even beginning to write
music that would “work” for TikTok. Finally, Cirisano dives into the new
marketing techniques record labels have adopted for TikTok, as well as
Federal Trade Commission practices around paid advertising. The article is
at once an in-depth look at the ways TikTok has impacted music and a
30,000 foot view of that dynamic. Its conclusion is evident: TikTok has,
and will continue to, radically transform the music industry. The extent
to which the app will leave a lasting effect, however, remains to be seen.
Cirisano’s billboard article stumbles into larger questions about TikTok.
The first is whether the recent changes in the music industry, which
Cirisano establishes have been profound, are positive or negative for
artists and record labels. This is, of course, a complicated and
subjective topic; Elias Leight, a writer for Rolling Stone, tackles the
issue in his article “Music Prepares for Potential TikTok Ban.” Leight
writes that the gatekeeping which was rampant in what he calls “the old
system” (Leight)—a record label-driven market—is totally removed by
TikTok. That is to say that independent artists have better, more direct
access to listeners. These musicians are being quickly scooped up by
record labels, who “frequently offer truckloads of cash to artists with a
TikTok hit but hardly any name recognition” (Ibid). At first glance, this
might seem like a win-win: unknown artists can break through, and labels
can profit off them. In an interview with NPR, however, pop music critic
Mikael Wood says that this pattern is “potentially creating a generation
of one-hit wonders” because musicians “haven’t developed the kind of
grassroots following that will actually see them through when their next
song isn’t maybe a viral smash” (Wood qtd. Garcia-Navarro). It is thus
unclear whether TikTok and the culture of instant popularity will
positively or negatively impact those in the industry, particularly
up-and-coming artists. The second debate that is necessary to acknowledge
when discussing TikTok is ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns it,
which Cirisano ignores entirely. This first emerged in early 2019, when
Claudia Biancotti published an article for the Peterson Institute for
International Economics, calling on Western authorities to address privacy
and security concerns of Chinese apps (she imagines the worst, calling
TikTok the “Trojan horse of the AI race” (Biancotti)). A year and a half
later, Donald Trump famously began threatening to ban the social media
platform, evidence that the United States government takes the data threat
seriously, although it does not appear that the app’s users do (Leight). A
related issue is the degree to which content on TikTok is censored. In New
York Times podcast “Rabbit Hole,” host Kevin Roose articulates that
ByteDance has been “way more heavy handed in curating and controlling what
appears on its app. Whether that’s meant, like, hiding controversial
political speech, or more subtle things like making sure that the people
whose posts show up on the main feed look happy and beautiful” (Roose).
This begs the question: does ByteDance implicitly control which songs, or
which types of songs, become popular on TikTok (and, by extension,
elsewhere)?
These debates, in addition to the wealth of information provided in
Cirisano’s article, contribute directly to our proposed exploration of the
impact of TikTok creators on the popularity of music artists. It is
evident that TikTok, as a platform which encourages viral content—of
creators and music—has tangibly affected music, from what is popular right
now, to how established record labels are approaching marketing. Through
researching the direct link between prominent influencers and streaming
rates, as well as the perception creators have of their sway, we hope to
flesh out a more comprehensive understanding of this dynamic, and
contribute to the rich debate surrounding TikTok itself.
Bibliography
Biancotti, Claudia. “The Growing Popularity of Chinese Social Media
Outside China Poses New Risks in the West.” Peterson Institute for
International Economics, 11 Jan. 2019,
www.piie.com.
Caramanica, Jon. “Is TikTok a Music Industry Friend or Troll?” Edited by
Pedro Rosado, The New York Times, 17 Sept. 2020,
www.nytimes.com.
Cirisano, Tatiana. “The Real TikTok Challenge? Turning Influencer Status
into Hitmaker Clout." Billboard,
www.billboard.com
Garcia-Navarro, Lulu. “How TikTok Has Changed The Music Industry.” NPR,
Weekend Edition Sunday, 27 Sept. 2020,www.npr.org
Leight, Elias. Music Prepares for Potential TikTok Ban. 18 Sept. 2020,
www.rollingstone.com
Roose, Kevin. “Rabbit Hole Eight: 'We Go All'.” The New York Times, 4 June
2020,
www.nytimes.com
more specifically, to what extent have prominent creators on TikTok
influenced the popularity of various music artists? To better understand
this dynamic, we will use both qualitative and quantitative methods of
research. The former will be made up of interviews with popular TikTok
creators (who we know personally), as well as people working in the social
media and music industries. The latter will be a comparison of data from
TikTok (on viral songs, and dates famous creators first used them) and
Soundcharts.com, which provides information on the rates at which songs
are streamed over time; this will allow us to trace a direct link (or lack
thereof) between TikTok influencers and the popularity of various songs.
We hypothesize that there will be a clear connection between the two, but
that famous creators are not gatekeepers for songs going viral on TikTok.
What we cannot predict is the role creators view themselves as playing in
the music industry, and whether there is a disconnect between that
perception and reality. For this Individual Commentary, I have thus chosen
Tatiana Cirisano’s article for billboard (of the Billboard Hot
100), “The Real TikTok Challenge? Turning Influencer Status Into Hitmaker
Clout,” because it discusses the relationship between influencer music
choices, record label marketing strategies, and the democratic nature of
TikTok, where it is possible to go from anonymous to viral to famous in
just a few days.