Consider This from NPR - TikTok Is Creating Music Stars – And The Music Industry Is Watching

Episode Date: February 4, 2022

User-generated content specific to TikTok has propelled songs old and new to viral success. Whether it's someone lip-syncing to a song, or participating in a dance or trend using that song, it's made music discovery more participatory. Success on the app can lead to success on the charts, and record labels are looking to TikTok for their next stars.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Tyler Colen has pursued a lot of things in his 26 years. He played college basketball. He won an MTV reality show. He's tried podcasting, modeling, acting. But in 2019, he got pretty serious about music. After singing in my car for like six months for an hour and a half every single day, I really stuck in the middle under Ty Baredace. You know what she said to me?

She said, you're a player, aren't you? day, I really stuck in the middle under Ty Verdes. He put it up on TikTok under that name, Ty Verdes. And at the time, he was working at a Verizon store. I saw other people like me that had no following end up on the radio. And when you see that happen multiple times because of one app, And before he knew it, he was fielding calls from presidents of record labels during his lunch break. He got a record deal, made a debut album, and is going on tour this year. Stuck in the Middle has been streamed well over 100 million times on Spotify. If you just look at my TikTok, I really, really want people to understand how simple this is, is that it's not about a strategy or anything like that. It's about the consistency of posting your music on a platform, showing your ideas, showing that you are like an artist.

That's really it. Is the song good? And are you putting it on the platform where people are at right now? TikTok is definitely where the people are at right now. The social media app saw a huge rise during the pandemic. Globally, TikTok has 1 billion monthly active users. Everyone that is understanding now with this app that it's literally the closest we've gotten to human connection that we can get right now. It's literally a window to somebody else's

life. Unlike Instagram, where it's been posed pictures, this and that. And then when you have something that's of value, that is so raw, people are like, wow, this is something that I need to be a part of. Now, Colin thinks he would have made it in the industry regardless. TikTok just sped up the process. But he did notice that his fans on TikTok were uniquely engaged. They will do stuff for you because you're actually giving them value. You just made this video. You have this song.

You have this melody that they really like. They want to go get that. You just made this video. You have this song. You have this melody that they really like. They want to go get that. You just gave them something. Consider this. TikTok is not the first social media app to create stars. But for some musicians, this app has distinct advantages. And the music business is paying close attention. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Friday, February 4th. Visit BetterHelp.com slash consider to learn more and get 10% off your first month.

This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. Facebook lost daily users in the last three months of 2021, and its parent company Meta just had its worst day ever on Wall Street. Now, there are a lot of reasons for that, though in a call yesterday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg singled out one of them by name.

People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly. Facebook and Instagram are losing users and valuable advertising dollars to TikTok. And they're trying to keep up, but it might not be enough. The thing that is somewhat unique here is that TikTok is so big as a competitor already and also continues to grow at quite a fast rate. TikTok has proven formidable in business. A far cry from its reputation as just some app for kids to do dances on. And for the business of music, TikTok, not Facebook or other competitors, is the industry's new obsession. NPR's Mia Venkat dug into why.

The artist Doja Cat has a hit song called Say So with its own signature dance. She didn't invent the dance. That was a teenager on TikTok named Hayley Sharp, and it went viral. Doja Cat noticed, put it in her music video, and then performed it at the Grammy Awards. Maybe you don't use TikTok or you don't use it to discover music. But as Doja Cat proves, the music industry certainly does. And that's partly because the audience on TikTok. They're not just listening to music in a sort of like lean back passive way, but they're more likely to do more lean forward activities like creating playlists or listening to full albums on streaming or buying merchandise. Tatiana Sirisano is a music industry analyst. She says consumer behavior data shows that TikTok users are more likely to spend money on music.

What's more, TikTok users often respond to music with their own videos. They might lip sync a song, make up a dance, or try to sing it. It's changed music listening from being a one-way relationship where a song comes out and you listen to it on your own to something that you participate in. I mean, I don't think that any other social media app has done that to this degree. TikTok is like peak UGC in that way. UGC, short for user-generated content. It's one of the buzzwords currently going around in the music industry. When I first started, it used to be a puzzle for a three-year-old. You had video and radio. That's Nina Webb. She's the head of marketing at Atlantic Records. And you just, you needed money and leverage and influence as a label. And now I feel like it's the thousand piece gray sky where TikTok is the only piece that will individually

move the dial the way it does. Last August, an Atlantic Records artist named Gail released a song called ABCDEFU. They promoted the song on TikTok a lot, but it didn't really take off until months later, when the sign language sub-community of TikTok got a hold of it, in the middle of her tour. She saw the difference from playing at the beginning of the tour, people like somewhat kind of heard this or looked it up, to by the end, I mean, it was like the whole place was going crazy. So November was really the tipping point.

And it was 100% the sign language community. That user-generated content made all the difference for Gayle. Her song has been sitting at number one on the Billboard Global 200 chart for three weeks now. These days, there's a cottage industry dedicated to marketing a song or artist on TikTok, paying influencers to promote a song, posting short clips to see what people respond to, trying to get a dance challenge going. Webb says she's certainly tried different strategies, but most times when a song takes off on TikTok, it seems to happen organically.

I mean, there's a million examples of a lot of very expensive campaigns that had no return. Like, we can't do it. It has to come from fans or the artist, because you're talking to Gen Z. They smell everything out. Oh, baby, baby, if I kiss you Sometimes those fans work in unexpected ways. Celine Dion's It's All Coming Back to Me Now came out 25 years ago, but recently set one-day streaming records on Spotify and YouTube after lip-syncing the most dramatic part of the song became a viral TikTok trend. Don't cry, snowman

Or take the song Snowman by Sia. Who'll catch your tears if you can't catch me dying? That came out in 2017, but the TikTok challenge came in 2020. I'm going to try to see if I can do this one breath. I want you to know that I'm never leaving Cause I'm in this cold till death will be freezing And you want my home, my home for a

season. So come on, let's go. Analyst Tatiana Sirisano says the ability for a song to go this viral is baked into TikTok since the whole app prioritizes discovery. When you open TikTok, even if you've never used the app before and aren't following anyone, it opens immediately to a discovery page and just starts feeding you content. Like you open it and you're on the train. She says the music industry used to hunt for unknown talent and develop it. But the rise of TikTok has helped to flip that formula. I think that we are increasingly in an era where audiences are choosing what they want to hear and record labels and the rest of the music industry are sort of listening to that. Independent artists have taken notice.

Hi, my name is Demoye. I am 21. I'm originally from Dallas, Texas, and I am a multi-hyphenate music artist slash content creator. Demoye is a composer, producer, singer, songwriter, and she plays a lot of instruments. I'm primarily a piano player first. I started around age two. I picked up guitar, electric and acoustic. I can play ukulele, dulcimer, melodica. She posts a lot of covers and remixes of other songs, usually trending songs. And it's a lot of work. A minute-long TikTok usually takes around six hours to create. I know starting out, it took me a little less than a week to get 100 followers. And I remember, like, seeing 100, I freaked out.

I thought, hey, I'm famous, you know? I was grateful. Sometimes a video flops, hey, I'm famous. You know, I was grateful. Sometimes a video flops and sometimes it takes off. But Des Moines says that she generally feels TikTok helps boost musicians like her. I will say for now, the goal is to thrive as an independent artist without looking at any labels at the moment and to still build a platform to the point where I would feel comfortable releasing music alone. In other words, she's hoping that eventually, she won't have to ask the traditional powers in the music industry for recognition. Thanks to TikTok and other platforms, they may recognize her first.

That was NPR's Mia Venkat, and you are listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.