TikTok is Taking Over
- Rebecca Skaggs
- Oct 24, 2019
- 2 min read
Earlier this year, you couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without hearing Lil Nas X’s viral hit single, “Old Town Road,” but do you know how the song got so popular so quickly?
The answer is TikTok.
For anyone that doesn’t know, TikTok is a “social media video app for creating and sharing short (3-15 second) lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos.” It was first launched in 2017 but didn’t gain popularity until last year and has been exploding ever since. It’s owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance, who merged with the app formerly know as musical.ly, that had a similar format to that of TikTok now. There are a lot of cool features on the app such as filter, effects, and the ability to “duet” with another creator, but the most important feature is choosing the song or track that plays. Therefore, a lot of the content is music-based dance videos, memes, and challenge videos. The app is targeted mainly for use by teenagers and young adults, but is also used by many adults, including celebrities and even Wal-Mart.
But what does all this mean for music?
The app has created a new space for songs to go viral fast. With the example of Old Town Road, the song was released in December 3, 2018 and didn’t see much success till Lil Nas X uploaded the song to TikTok himself. This led to thousands of videos to be created using the song, named the “Yeehaw challenge” where creators changing into cowboy outfits when the beat dropped. The release of the remix featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, only added to the ridiculousness and shareability.
So, what makes a song good for TikTok? The goal is to make something sort and easy to act out or dance to. If a dance challenge is created out of the song, which can happen for no particular reason, such as Tiny Meat Gang’s Walk Man going viral after a creator developed a dance that users wanted to recreate, you are set. However, this is more of a chance occurrence. A song that is simple, short, funny or cool is what really flourishes. For example, E40’s 2014 track, Choices (Yup), has been used thousands of times due to its simple and catchy background. The words “nope and “yup” are repeated with a few beats in between. This allowed for variation of text to be in the video with the responses of yes and no of the audio to answer for them.
Not only is TikTok changing music, it is also shaking up the traditional model and flow of record labels. TikTok has recently been a starting point for discovery and a launching pad for artists. The community on the platform is constantly surfacing new and old music to use in videos. This means that A&R executives now track top songs and artists on TikTok, looking to sign new talent.
Whether you like it or not, TikTok is changing the music industry. Let me know what your thoughts are about TikTok? Do you use the app to create content and discover new music? If not, how do you see the app impacting music in the future?
Hi Rebecca!
I loved this article because I keep hearing about Tik Tok on campus and seeing Tik Tok ambassadors everywhere, but I don’t use the platform so I never really knew what it could do exactly. I also had no idea that this is how Old Town Road became so popular, and it was one of my favorite songs for a while. This platform is really reflective of how powerful social media can be in shaping public opinion and trends. For such a long time people have been saying that Facebook and Instagram are going to become irrelevant soon, and it seems that a new platform like TikTok is what people have been predicting. I wonder how long it…
Tik Tok is extremely prominent in the viral music landscape as you detailed throughout this blog. While the platform is a driving force for this type of music marketing now, I think it fits into a bigger web of media for these artists. For example, I think Lil Nas X's Twitter persona helps his fame greatly. On Twitter, he tweets with a very casual and funny tone, frequently posting memes and engaging with fans. This activity resonates well with the Gen Z audience that his music primarily reaches. When fans can connect with an artist through their music and online persona, it creates a more intimate relationship between artist and fan. Now, Lil Nas X is the poster-boy for viral…
Rebecca,
After reading your blog about Tik-Tok I learned so much about the platform that I didn't realize it did. I don't have a Tik-Tok account, or even the app to watch them, because I thought it was just like Vine but with longer videos. Even in the age of Vine I watched them all on Instagram anyway so I didn't think I would miss out on too much without a Tik-Tok account. Your post taught me that Tik-Tok is so much more about the music used in each video than short jokes. I remember hearing a radio talkshow once, I believe on NPR or Aspen Public Radio, that talked about what Tik-Tok means for pop music. The speaker said…
Hi Rebecca,
During my last internship in 2018, I teamed up with another intern to run the official TikTok account of the department I worked for. It was a fairly challenging experience since I disliked TikTok when it got huge in China and never was a user of it. Despite the horrible short video I made (I had to act, shoot, and edit all by myself), I had to put background music into careful consideration. A very interesting trend (or algorithm) I discovered was selecting popular background music will guarantee a higher possibility to draw my content from the “content pool” and push it on the trending list. I agree with the point you made on “make something short and…
Hi Rebecca!
I had no idea that Old Town Road gained it's fame from Tik Tok, so thank you for that fun fact. Tik Tok is funny to me because I didn't really think it would catch on, but I'm not sure why I thought that. People still treasure Vines, and that app died out years ago. Tik Tok just seems to take up more of people's time and be a bit more advanced than Vine, but pretty much the same concept. I do have a lot of friends who spend time scrolling through Tik Tok, and sometimes making the dances themselves, but I have not yet- and don't plan to download the app. I think it this is the…