Front Burner - TikTok is changing the music industry — and music

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

With its immense catalog of sounds — from old tracks to new and every remix in between — TikTok has evolved beyond its early days as a space for lip-syncing videos and dance trends into a cultural "tastemaker," and a driving force for the music industry. The app is now partnering with Ticketmaster to help users find and buy concert tickets right on the app. With its recent filing to trademark "TikTok Music" in countries including the U.S., New Zealand, and the U.K., there's evidence that TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, could try to compete with streaming giants like Spotify and Apple Music. Today on Front Burner, Insider media reporter Dan Whateley joins guest host Jason D'Souza to break down how TikTok has caused a paradigm shift in music — down to how it's written — and what its plans might be to leverage the app's power over the industry.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey, everybody. It's Jamie. I'm calling in from vacation because this is crazily our 1000th episode of Front Burner. It really, really doesn't feel like it. It's gone by so fast, but we wanted to say on this special occasion, thank you very much to all of you, whether you've been with us from the beginning or you're a new listener. Thank you very much for giving us your time, for telling us what you like and don't like,

even through your very honest, sometimes brutally honest reviews, or just based on the data that we can see about what topics you all like to listen to. It feels like this show has really grown so much since we launched in 2018. And it's also wild to think about how much the world has changed too. We've gone through a global pandemic together. Climate change is of course more pressing than ever. We faced real civil unrest abroad, but also right here at home. And not to mention, these are very uncertain economic times. And so we're looking forward to the next 1000 with you. We hope we can continue to grow, to explore the world with you. And most importantly, to keep giving you something that you feel like is worth listening to. All right, back to the show.

Hi, I'm Jason D'Souza in for Jamie Poisson. I guess I just knew it's maybe like stigma. Like I just thought it was like this crack app, like this amphetamine social media app from China that like spied on you. Ryan Galdamond is the front man for BC rock band Mother Mother. And he told me he didn't seriously look at TikTok until 2020 when his band suddenly blew up on the app. Yeah, it was like an alternate reality. I jumped on the app and found like probably 70 or 80,000 videos vibing out to Mother Mother music in their bedrooms or dressed up in cosplay or doing various things, doing crafts, doing art.

And it was like, is this my band? I don't think so. Is this earth? What's going on here? This is weird. And here's the weirdest part. These videos that total strangers were making online set to his music. They weren't even using his newest tracks. They were reviving songs over a decade old from the band's 2008 album. Oh my heart. The biggest was a song called Hayloft. from the band's 2008 album, Oh My Heart, the biggest was a song called Hayloft. These videos, they've racked up tens of millions of views.

The algorithm that serves up videos on TikTok is chaotic and mysterious. And to this day, Ryan doesn't exactly know how these old songs of his caught fire. I think it probably originated on YouTube in the anime community. That community certainly would have migrated to TikTok once that became a thing. But when he recently got the idea to continue the story

he wrote in Hayloft by writing a sequel, Ryan tried to involve the same people who made his original, this sleeper mega hit. So it was important for me to check in, come up with a kernel of an idea, and then throw that out there onto Instagram and TikTok and be like, hey guys, you know, I wrote this riff thinking maybe we should do a sequel to Haloc.

What do you think? And totally braced for a pushback and, you know, a negative response. But it was 99% overwhelmingly supportive. Like, oh my God, you got to do this. And in case you're wondering, Hayloft 2 has some 70 million plays on Spotify since January. Like with so much of global communication and culture,

TikTok's huge reach has shifted the balance of power in the music industry. For Ryan, that's been an incredibly positive thing, putting him on the same level as his fans. And so I think it is pushing artists to be more vulnerable and authentic within their And their personas may be subduing the celebrity aspect and the pedestal that maybe artists stand upon. But with big labels now chasing TikTok trends to make their songs explode, some artists say optimizing the platform is affecting the craft of making music, or that they're being forced to act more like influencers than artists. being forced to act more like influencers than artists. So they wanted me to do a six TikTok campaign over the course of a month where we slowly and organically make the record go viral.

I don't know how to do that. I wish this was a joke. So today we are bringing you the first episode in an ongoing series on how TikTok is changing the world. I'm joined by Dan Waitley, a media reporter for Insider, and he's going to explain the many ways the music industry is changing to suit TikTok as the app becomes too big to ignore. Hi, Dan. Morning. So for the uninitiated out there who have not downloaded TikTok,

can you explain why music is so central to the experience on the app? Yeah, so TikTok itself is really built around sound. So a lot of the ways that users interact with videos is by the audio behind them. It's really built into the user experience itself. When TikTok launched, it was actually merged with another app called Musical.ly. And that app was used for kind of lip syncing to songs and dancing. And so it's really been kind of part of the kind of apps culture from the very beginning. But it's also, I think, unique because users will discover kind of new videos and go down kind of video rabbit holes by clicking through sounds themselves. And I think that's part of

why music or rather artists and labels have been so successful at using TikTok to kind of promote music. When you're personally scrolling through TikTok, what are some of the ways you've run into new music that you've vibed with? Yeah, I mean, I think I, to be completely honest, am a typical TikTok user in the sense that I will often hear a song that I like in a video, and it could just be kind of playing in the background, and I'll kind of click out into something like Spotify or YouTube to actually hear the full song after the fact. It's funny. I always thought of myself as totally impervious to the, to the reach of the TikTok influence. And then the other day I dropped something off the counter and made a bit of a mess. And the first thing to come out of my mouth was, Oh no, and I'm like, Oh my God, that's a TikTok thing, isn't it?

no, no, no, no, no, no. And I'm like, oh my God, that's a TikTok thing, isn't it? Yeah. No, I mean, I think we all find kind of things like that seeping into our heads in the middle of the day. The Stranger Things, the Netflix Stranger Things, Chrissy Wake

Up remix sound is something that kind of plays on repeat in my head, you know, a few hours each day. Chrissy Wake Up! I don't like this! Chrissy Wake Up! And that kind of plays on repeat in my head, you know, a few hours each day. And for artists, the potential audience to the algorithm that it can give them, it's huge. Can you give us some examples of how being used as a sound on TikTok has caused new artists or songs to suddenly blow up? cause new artists or songs to suddenly blow up? It creates this incredible opportunity for up and coming performers to get discovered because, you know, the way videos are surfaced on TikTok is on kind of a content discovery page called the For You page. And anyone really has a chance to kind of blow up there. So unlike maybe other social media platforms or social entertainment

platforms where users kind of have to go and search out for your content, TikTok gets just served up right in front of you. You know, if you are not famous, but you are talented as an artist and your video kind of shows up, you know, on the For You page, you can really take off. And, you know, I think initially that was even more common because, you know, TikTok was smaller. There weren't as many users on the platform. And so, you know, a song that was used in a popular video would get a lot more exposure. Now the company or the app has, you know, over a billion monthly active users. And so it's a bit more saturated. And what's so fascinating to me as well

is it's not just brand new songs that are gaining this level of popularity. We heard off the top, the front man from Mother Mother who explained how a song of theirs from back in 2008 blew up in such a massive way. So how has the platform done that and have this reach back to older songs as well?

I think that's one of the most fascinating aspects of this whole story around TikTok and music is that it's really made kind of catalog tracks and kind of legacy songs pop back into the mainstream in a big way. We've seen other groups like Fleetwood Mac had a big resurgence on TikTok with their song Dreams. Matthew Wilder had a kind of moment with his song Break My Stride. does that mean? And you say, I'm not gonna break my stride. Nobody gonna slow me down. Those are songs from the 70s and 80s. And suddenly you have teens, Gen Z users, listening to these songs again.

And you see them charting on apps like Spotify. And so I think it's actually really changed how the industry and the record labels themselves think about their catalogs. They need to monitor TikTok and be aware of when a song that's maybe not top of mind to them is suddenly, you know, gaining popularity. And there's kind of things they can do to kind of fan the flames on a song that's starting to take off. So our producer Rukzar spoke to Dan Runcie from the hip hop industry outlet Trapital about the seismic shift that TikTok has been creating within the industry. He actually compared this moment to the dawn

of music videos on TV. This is an app that now has over 1 billion monthly active users and its impact is continuing to grow every day. And so when we merge together the music influence, but also what social media offers, people being able to bring their own remix to it, it's the perfect combination of where culture and technology meet really resonates in the same way that MTV was able to do back when cable really picked up back several decades ago. This is it. Welcome to MTV Music Television, the world's first 24-hour stereo video music channel. The best of TV combined with the best of radio. So Dan, let's get into how the industry is once again changing in order to capitalize on this perfect cultural and technical

storm. First, how are labels and marketers using TikTok's biggest influencers to try and make hits? So labels are hiring influencers to use songs in videos. It doesn't have to be like a dance. You know, it could it could even just be like a comedic video that happens to include a song in the background. I've actually written about labels hiring an account with a hydraulic press that crushes items. And the goal is really just to kind of get some views and listens on the song itself. Hopefully, it kind of can pick up steam from there. That strategy has been shifting a lot because as the number of users on TikTok increases, hiring, you know, just one or two or five top influencers doesn't work as well anymore. It's really about a lot of them are turning to kind of influencers with smaller followings and just paying more of them.

What's the what's the sliding scale here? What what could a smaller influencer be paid versus one of the larger celebrity ones? influencer be paid versus one of the larger celebrity ones? Yeah. So for the kind of top creators, they can make thousands of dollars, even tens of thousands of dollars for the use of a song in a video. If you are less famous, maybe you're getting a few hundred dollars or less than that. So, you know, it's more cost effective to hire a smaller creator. And if you work with a bunch of them, it just increases the chances that that video is going to end up kind of getting picked up by the algorithm, which is really the goal. When a lot of people think about TikTok, they probably still think about music and dance trends. There was that one recently with Drake's

Feel No Ways where people danced with it. You know what I'm talking about? That creepy animated man in a onesie that TikTok could superimpose on your screen. So how are artists and labels trying to use those trends in order to promote their music? That's a great example. I'm trying to remember the name of that character. He has a name? I didn't realize he had a name. Yeah. You know, all the top labels,

they have teams that are kind of monitoring TikTok. They also work with kind of influencer marketing firms and agencies that are dedicated to, to kind of monitoring TikTok trends. But a lot of it is reactive too. I mean, I think, you know, an artist even will see that their song is being used in a certain way, in a certain trend. And the most proactive ones will kind of jump on that and they'll make their own video and kind of join in on the fun. And I think those scenarios are the ones where it's most effective, right? Because it's pretty hard to force TikTok users to do something. But once something has momentum, that's really when i think you can help push your song forward our producer derek is uh is telling me that the uh aforementioned creepy animated man in a onesie

uh his name is horace yeah horace i know in some cases artists and labels are even throwing what they call uh listening parties with with creators before those songs even release. What exactly are those listening parties? Essentially, it harkens back to this idea of who are the kind of tastemakers in music. I think a lot of artists and particularly their labels are aware that TikTok influencers are the ones who are helping introduce people to music. And so labels will work with TikTok to host kind of private listening sessions before a song is released. The goal there is really to kind of get the creators

excited about the song. It's a cool opportunity for them, right? They get to kind of meet the artist and do kind of a Q&A and chat with them. So that's also kind of part of it as well. But yeah, I mean, I've reported on how artists like Miley Cyrus have done these kind of private listening sessions. And it's a form of fan engagement, but it's also similar to kind of what artists and labels have always done, which is

figure out who the right people are to get a song kind of out into the public. And, you know, maybe that used to be radio and then that was MTV. And it's kind of always shifting as consumer habits shift. so dan when i hear music on on tiktok it's usually a short snippet of a funny line or a super catchy hook uh i'm thinking of when a breakdown in lizzo's about damn time took over a few months ago and actually ryan guldemont from Mother Mother was pretty passionate when he told us why his music seems to suit the platform so well. Mother Mother's music, I think, is made up of a lot of bold moments. It's like moment after moment, punctuation after punctuation. These kind of blurts and barks and staccato vocal phrases and whiffs. And it's weird, but it's also quite catchy.

And TikTok, it likes all of that kind of stuff. It likes moments. It likes stuff that kind of jumps off the page and punctuates, I guess, what a person might be doing in their own space, like cleaning dishes or making food or hanging out in their bedroom. Like these little capsules of mundanity are shown quite effectively with music that punctuates and highlights a hand gesture or a facial expression. That's so fascinating to me. But then I also wonder for other artists who take stock of that, how might chasing TikTok success be changing how music is actually written? It's a really interesting question. Very few artists, I think, would ever admit that they're taking TikTok into account when they create new music. But there's no denying that the way that music is first experienced these days is often in a 15 second snippet or mind when they are writing a song that they, you know,

oh, this moment could be great for TikTok. And so absolutely on the promotional side, you know, it's kind of the job of the marketer, the music marketer to think about what is going to be the most shareable moment from a song. There's so many examples that we could go down that road. Speaking of examples, I know you spoke to a rapper from Ottawa with 4 million followers. Yeah, so Tiags is a Canadian music producer, and he really built out his career on TikTok. And the way that he did that was finding trends that were already kind of blowing up on TikTok and then creating little kind of remixes and mashups of those trends. There was this trend that I saw on TikTok and it was like this girl with her lizard

with a bearded dragon saying like, excuse me, her name is Margo. That video had so many views. And then I looked at the sound, it had like 300,000 videos on it. So I was like, wow, I don't understand why this is viral. Then I saw this guy, this producer make a song with it. I was like, bro, I can do way better than that. His music was kind of in conversation with what people were already sharing and talking about on TikTok. And that strategy worked really well. He ended up getting a record label deal out of it. It enabled him to grow really quickly and get exposure in a way that, you know, without TikTok, without social media, you know, an up and coming performer without any label backing, without kind of any momentum before that would not have been able to kind of take off. And I've seen no shortage of artists themselves making content for TikTok, like Doja Cat, who I'm told has been out here yelling about her nails.

You could never be me. You're literally bitter. You're literally jealous. My nails look like little cute sweet candies. So what do we know about how labels have been pushing artists to make videos on the platform? pushing artists to make videos on the platform. Recently, we've seen some performers speaking out around feeling pressure. We had the performer Halsey. They said that their label was kind of putting pressure on them to make TikTok videos in order to kind of go viral and help a song do well before it was released. And we had a release date and they were like, we don't want to release it. And I was like, why? And they were like, because research shows that 80 percent of new music is discovered because it goes viral on TikTok.

And I was like, that's cool. I don't really fucking care. I'm 27 years old. I'm not a TikTok artist. I love TikTok artists, but I didn't organically like grow through that app. didn't organically like grow through that app and like I just like doing things in a way where my fans feel like they are a part of the story and like they know what's going on and I guess basically they're saying that that doesn't work anymore I think artist TikTok fatigue is definitely something that's starting to show up part Part of that, I think, is artists are performing in person again. You know, I think earlier in the pandemic, when TikTok was first kind of gaining steam, it was a lot easier for artists to make TikTok videos because they were stuck at home, their concerts had been put on hold, making videos was kind of a good outlet.

But now they're back to a lot of them are back to their kind of regular schedules of touring and recording. And so it's a bit more of an ask to have them, you know, spend time making a video themselves. And unlike some other social media platforms, TikTok videos that perform well really require the artist to be on camera themselves, making something that feels kind of DIY versus maybe something like Instagram, where they could have their teams upload clips from concerts, performances. You know, it requires the artist to kind of get more involved in production themselves. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

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To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Dan, it strikes me as though TikTok has gained a lot of power over the music industry here, power that maybe used to belong to big players like labels. Are there ways that TikTok has been now leveraging that power? There are several ways that TikTok is leveraging its influence in music. So one thing it's doing is it makes money from advertising and marketing of songs as part of its kind of general, more broad ad business. The company recently launched its own kind of artist distribution platform called SoundOn. Interestingly, its parent company ByteDance recently filed a trademark for something called TikTok Music. And one of the applications or services potentially that they would do with that TikTok Music trademark would be a music streaming app.

would be a music streaming app. And ByteDance already operates its own Spotify, Apple Music competitor. It's called Rezo in three markets. And so I think the big question that everyone is thinking about is, would TikTok launch a music streaming platform? It already has such big influence in music discovery. Rezo, it's live in India. It's has such big influence in music discovery. Rezo's, you know, it's live in India, it's live in Brazil, it's actually done really well in the Indian market. And so if you think about kind of finding ways to make money from influence, that would be a clear path for them.

You know, one of the other things Dan Runcie from Trapital told us is that TikTok has become the discovery point for so much in music that it only makes sense that it would try to get a piece of everything that follows. TikTok has become the top of the funnel for a lot of people in the music industry. And what that means is that this is a place where you capture attention. This is a place where you get discovered. And then hopefully some of those people that discover your music funnel into the people that would stream your music. And then that would funnel into the people that would show up at your concert. And when you have that, there's a natural strategic desire to see, okay, well, if you are the place where both artists and fans are meeting, what are the things that you can serve to offer them? Even if those things may be currently served in other areas. even if those things may be currently served in other areas. And now TikTok has partnered with Ticketmaster to start selling concert tickets on the app.

It really seems like they're consuming more of the music industry every week. How does this expansion fit in with the broader way TikTok has been developing as it grows? It's been interesting to watch TikTok go from newcomer, kind of the challenger app in 2019 and early 2020, to this major threat to other social entertainment platforms. I think, you know, we've seen executives at meta platforms, the kind of Facebook owner and Snapchat owner, Snap Inc. We've seen them talk about TikTok as a real competitor. And so I think, you know, it's kind of hit a critical mass where it can really sell itself as the go-to advertising platform to reach a young, you know, Gen Z audience. And so music is just one piece of its broader strategy. I think we see it exerting influence in a lot of different industries.

And it's going to be fascinating, I think, to see in the kind of coming years how that continues to shift if, you know, maybe another competitor emerges that is, you know, capturing the attention of Gen Z that threatens TikTok's own kind of, you know, new influence in that space. Dan, it's such a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for taking us through it. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. That's all for today. Thanks for listening to the 1000th episode of FrontBurner. If you listen to all 1000 episodes, bring your stamp card in because we'll give you a free episode on Monday. Frontburner was produced this week by Imogen Burchard, Derek Vanderwyk, Simi Bassi, Ali Janes, Ashley Fraser, Bryce Hoy, and Mackenzie Cameron. Our intern is Rukzar Ali.

Our sound design was by Mackenzie Cameron and Sam McNulty. Our music is by Joseph Chavison. The show was executive produced this week by Imogen Burchard and Allie Janes. I'm Jason D'Souza, in for Jamie Poisson. Jamie's back next week. Thanks for listening. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.