top of page

How the Music Industry Will Never Be the Same

  • January 27, 2021

Salome Agbaroji

Tik Tok has drastically changed the music industry and how the world engages with the songs and sounds created by artists. The app displays billions of videos using unheard music and sounds accessible to all people on the platform. Just a year or so ago, music was solely blasted at parties, bumped in cars, and played our headphones. Now, due to Tik Tok, music is at the center of comedy, leisure, and quarantine life.

_114638575_tiktok.jpg

photo obtained from bbc.com

The Positive Effects of Tik Tok on the Music Industry

Tik Tok creates more opportunities for smaller artists, with many people reaching considerable success within a very short time and creating more avenues for success. The music industry is infamous for discrimination and allowing very slim avenues for new and emerging artists to receive their big break. Record labels used to hold much of the power, only investing in the select few they deemed worthy by their arbitrary standards. Tik Tok evens the playing field and makes it so that virtually any artist can become extremely successful. Songs can reach many streams that were almost unheard of before the popularity of the app. For example, “Supalonely” by Benee went viral on Tik Tok and now has over ten million videos using that audio, with more than a billion total views.

The Negative Effects of Tik Tok on the Music Industry

One negative effect of Tik Tok on the music industry is that virtually any artist can become extremely successful. To music critics, seeing some of the songs that have gone viral on the app is concerning the integrity of music today. Tik Tok has changed the way that people listen and react to music. People more so look at the comedic quality or content-worthy aspects of music than the actual artistic quality. One example of this is how “Mop” by Tisakorean went extremely viral during the summer of 2020. The song is composed of very simple lyrics that are not by any means impressive to dedicated musicians or even to the average listener on the app. Tik Tok provides a new aspect of musical appeal, which values how catchy a song is over its artistic value. In the past year, popular music seems to become less and less impressive, as the modern factor of a song’s success is its consumability in fifteen seconds.

What Does this Mean for the Future of Music?

pasted image 0.png

In the way that the music industry is progressing with Tik Tok, a large factor in its future development, one can expect these trends to continue. Smaller artists will have more opportunities to advance their careers, with the music industry straying farther away from record labels and more largely in the hands of the people consuming the music. However, also expect for music to become more simplified to fit the new platforms on which they will live. 

photo obtained from bbc

All in all, despite the definitive effects the app has had on the music industry, this new platform has used the universal language of music to bond people from all corners of the globe in ways never done before.

bottom of page