If you have used TikTok in the past month (and I’m guessing most of the people reading this have), you might have stumbled across a video with the song End of Beginning by Djo in the background. This is because in early to mid-February the song went viral on the app and more than 1M posts were made with and about it (as of March 2024). The song really resonated with people, because of it’s lyrics:
And when I’m back in Chicago, I feel it
Another version of me, I was in it
Many users related to the feeling of being back somewhere (be that a country, a city or sometimes even a person) where you are able to be a version of you that doesn’t exist anywhere else – your most authentic, comfortable self. It therefore became a trend to post the song to clips of their own version of Chicago. I, for example, being from Milano really relate to the TikTok below:
Interestingly, the song was released back in 2022 but only blew up this year. Through being constantly on people’s For You Page (FYP), people started to stream it too and it became Djo’s first song to chart:
Source: X (formerly known as Twitter)
But let’s rewind. I take most of you have heard of TikTok by now and have probably engaged with it at some point (unless you have been living under a rock), but I don’t like assuming things so bear with me!
What exactly is TikTok?
TikTok as we know it today is a social media platform that allows users to produce, share and interact with up to 10-minute-long videos and it saw a significant spike in use during the COVID-19 lockdown by offering a unique way for users to share content online, as well as being able to bring people together in a way that was different than any other platform. Fast forward 4 years and the app is now the most downloaded social media globally after Instagram, with users averaging 95 minutes a day on the app.
Why is it important?
Now, you may ask yourself why this matters and it’s because the music industry and TikTok have become tightly intertwined: The platform has 1.1 billion active users and music is a major part of the apps experience and its appeal, since most of the content posted on the app is related to or has music in it. Former TikTok CEO, Kevin Mayer, described it as there being a ‘very symbiotic relationship between the two‘: TikTok needs the music and, on the other hand, the music industry needs TikTok because ‘that’s where a substantial amount of new music, songs and acts are broken’. The example of End of Beginning is only the tip of the iceberg. Arguably some of the new big names in music such as Doja Cat and Olivia Rodrigo, or more recently boygenius, would not have had such great career booms without the help of either their engagement with the app or some of their songs blowing up on the social media platform (namely Not Strong Enough by boygenius- the supergroup took home three Grammy Awards this year). But the TikTok effect doesn’t just apply to new releases. In 2020 Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 song Dreams went viral, making it clear that ‘old music could easily become new again provided it had the right treatment’.
The importance of the audience as the prosumer
This brings me to my next point, TikTok gives us the tools to be more than mere spectators, we become prosumers. Prosumer is essentially the terms producer and consumer merged and that’s exactly what prosumers are: ‘users who actively participate in the creation of the products and services that they will ultimately use’. Through TikTok this is possible, because fans have a direct communication channel with artists and their teams. Around July 2023, for example, a leaked unreleased Taylor Swift song started circulating and trending on TikTok with people posting themselves crying over it and thousands of fans asking for the song to be released, @aarondessner posted: ‘Dear Taylor Swift, I am once again begging and pleading for You’re losing me on streaming services’. I bet you have guessed where I am going with this by now and yes, you would be correct, Taylor Swift did indeed end up releasing You’re Losing Me (From The Vault) on the 29th November 2023.
Source: Picture by me
What isn’t working?
While this all sounds amazing there are also some downsides to the music industry’s near co-dependence with the app. For one, Adele mentioned in a 2021 interview that her team brought up TikTok, so that she could expand her music to a younger audience. She replied by asking ‘Who’s making the music for my peers?’, and that she wants people to truly understand what she sings about.
Adele individuated the problem: labels expect and ask of their artists to constantly produce new songs FOR TikTok following a specific formula consisting of ‘relatable’ lyrics and specific sets of notes. This makes songs pretty forgettable as there is no originality or authenticity involved in the creative process and the same types of songs are made viral over and over again. This, then again, raises questions around virality and whether or not artists can maintain their success after one of their songs has blown up.
Please share your opinions and experiences with TikTok down below, I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic!
CREATIVE CONVERSATION 