Opinion: Is TikTok Good For Music Listeners?

Written By Allen Hale | Photo By Solen Feyissa via Wikimedia Commons

TikTok’s impact on musicians is old news, drawing ire from some while drastically benefiting others. Although differences in disposable resources mean the playing field is never entirely even, the ease of posting and subsequent discovery serve as a force of semi-democratization regarding musical outreach — if you manage to score arbitrary algorithmic success, that is. 

Through the app, traditional barriers for listener engagement are eroded in some regard, yet the content itself must be largely packaged to fit aforementioned algorithmic demands: short-form, emphasizing trends or gimmicks, suitable for dances or lip syncs. For musicians, this means less time spent creating and more time spent posting. The way young artists are discovered, developed and invested in, simply put, has changed, leading to contention over the platform’s precise musical value. 

While TikTok has disrupted the music industry for years and catapulted contemporary stars — PinkPantheress and Yeat, for instance — into fame, less has been said about the app’s effects on those driving the ever-mysterious conditions for sudden virality: its user base. 

As with many social media platforms, attention is a commodity for TikTok itself; the time people spend watching videos drives up ad revenues and income. While the algorithm rewards posts watched all the way through, the window of initial opportunity closes in a blink. According to Fleur McGerr, “the main, younger demographic of TikTok has an attention span of only eight seconds,” despite TikTok themselves recommending videos be 21 to 34 seconds long. Unless a song is exceedingly short, it is delivered to audiences in a fragmented, out-of-context manner. The pithiest lyrics and catchiest hooks crowd out opportunities for sounds which are slower, developmental or meditative. Ensuingly, there is less room to encourage or reward patience and extended engagement. 

Although it is impossible to ignore these discrepancies, TikTok’s user base is, regardless of their mode of interaction, notably interested in music. Two-thirds of its scrollers seek out songs on streaming platforms after encountering them on the app. As discussed by NPR, 40 percent of active TikTok users pay for a monthly music subscription, compared to 25 percent of the general population. A similar trend follows monthly musical merchandise purchases. Each party stands to gain something, even as compensation for musicians remains questionable.

Oddly, then, TikTok seems to encourage a deeper interest in music from keenly receptive users while facilitating the actual exploration process in a somewhat shallow manner. Chance encounters stemming from mindless swiping can deliver listeners intriguing songs without one having to seek them out. Distracted consumption — hearing Mom Jeans’ “Scott Pilgrim V. My GPA” in a melodramatic college football edit, for instance — might serve as a gateway into artists, albums and styles previously unfamiliar to someone, associatively tied to the videos utilizing a given track. Or, they could be listened to on repeat for a few weeks before being dropped out of one’s rotation. Some trends linger like a bad cold, and others disappear almost instantaneously. Past the algorithm’s innerworkings, there are no guaranteed formulas for how engagement will proceed after something is watched.

The element of chaotic randomness can be an occasionally-rewarding counterpoint to other forms of deliberate musical exploration. Certainly, there is a unique joy to stumbling across a revelatory song from time to time. A bigger concern looms, however: What is lost when music discovery is no longer intentional?

In one regard, users cheat themselves out of simple efficiency if they default to TikTok for locating new artists. Exploratory platforms like Musicboard, Album of the Year and RateYourMusic facilitate similar opportunities for finding new music through features like aggregate ratings, genre charts and user-created recommendation lists. Unlike these sites, TikTok is not necessarily dedicated to music itself. Utilizing these resources may promote an active curiosity in music; even if your TikTok algorithm is tailored to your musical interests, it might simply re-promote what you already know or enjoy, rather than sharing conceptually difficult works. You learn more from engaging with art that you are initially unsure of than you would from what the algorithm knows you will already enjoy. 

In another regard, one could complain about others discovering music through TikTok as opposed to “authentically” finding already-known artists beloved on the app like Duster, Mazzy Star or Deftones, artists who were hardly obscure prior to reinvigorated interest. Debates surrounding the distinction between “fake” and “real” fans are timeless, especially present whenever someone with a cult-like following breaks into the mainstream; this pattern of discourse has followed both old and new musicians alike in various comment sections. Disinterested engagement with a given artist — only listening to their trending song, for example — is objectionable, accelerating the potential process by which someone is left a fading one-hit wonder. However, I cannot necessarily find a problem with someone discovering songs through TikTok itself. Many artists have in fact expressed gratitude over their work being re-discovered on the app, such as British rock group Bôa.

Rather, the issue with the app seems to be whether or not it emboldens new fans to more thoroughly explore someone’s recorded output after that initial moment of discovery. TikTok itself cannot control this behavior, but it certainly does not reward the album format — as is the case with any music streaming service. 

As such, predicting or understanding the manner in which a trending artist will benefit from this attention is difficult to pinpoint. On either type of site, though, songs are located within a vacuum, lacking any corollary explanation of the cultural histories which define something’s sonic inception, whether that be a song’s place within an album, discography, genre or social milieu. While some may go on a deep dive later, the TikTok encounter is not comparable in-itself to investing time and attention by listening to an entire record. By hearing a full album, even if they drop it halfway through, one is tasked with lingering in the music rather than merely considering it briefly before discarding or saving a video. The instant gratification that TikTok thrives upon and encourages in its use may not be conducive to a similar experience, even if one is aware of those benefits; squeezing something comparable out of the app requires resistance that undermines the instantaneous point of scrolling. Although complimentary content divulging on artists’ background can be found through TikTok, its experiential patterns mean we may learn less about the music and, in-turn, less about ourselves as listeners and people. There is less of an extended period of chance to reflect on what we are hearing, the ways it confronts our past experiences or creates new ones.

It seems that TikTok’s distinct design rewards what can be packaged into recognizable styles that contain memorable excerpts, limiting the traction of other sounds which do not conform to this model. I doubt that anyone utilizes the app as their sole means of engagement with music but, owing to its popularity and addictive nature, it surely has an outsized impact with users’ approach to listening behaviors, even outside of its bounds. The knee-jerk reaction of sliding past a video after a few seconds because you do not have the time for the dopamine payoff of its visual content or background sound contributes to a short-term attention span, potentially derailing other artistic encounters.

This is not to say that musical exploration has some idyllic, pristine form of action independent of any assistive measures. Those who care most about music will seek it out through means separate from TikTok anyways; Lazyrecords, for instance, prides itself for being an “algorithm-free music discovery platform.” And, to be sure, TikTok has had surprising outcomes for genres like shoegaze which, in spite of its longtime niche status, aversion to danceability and “historically aloof, album-oriented rockism,” has seen increased streams owing to users’ interest. Similarly, in the U.S., 46 percent of TikTok users listen to non-English music, 27 percent more likely than music listeners overall. Within its confines, the app nonetheless supports some boundary-expansion for listeners.

In short, I cannot argue that listening to full albums or uncompromising sounds makes someone more ethically engaged with music, even if that dedication is preferable for any self-declared fanatic. Rather, I can firmly say that pushing one’s listening habits in new or uncomfortable directions encourages an increasingly reflective approach to art, one in which listening is meant to challenge preconceived notions of satisfaction and expose us to unfamiliar forms of life and creative expression. 

This is all lofty, and breaking the TikTok habit is only a small portion of the work to be done if you want to locate new sounds without use of algorithmic recommendations. However, if you are seriously committed to music — as a fan, artist, writer or anyone else — you should self-examine how social media more broadly molds your musical experiences. You are not better than someone for knowing about fakemink before TikTok, but your active process of searching for new artists is, in the long-run, a more attentive way to interact with music.