No time for Tiktok
Not all musicians are enthused about making material for popular video app
Halsey posted a recent Tiktok with the effect of a hostage video. In it, she gazes blankly toward the camera as words appear onscreen: “basically i have a song that i love that i wanna release ASAP but my record label won't let me. ive been in this industry for 8 years and ive sold over 165 million records and my record company is saying that i can't release it unless they can fake a viral moment on tiktok.”
Ironically, that very Tiktok went viral — attracting the attention the label wanted, but with indignation at its core. Some wondered whether this was the marketing ploy. Others rallied behind Halsey, who uses she/they pronouns, arguing they “should be able to release music how you want.”
The relationship between musical artists and their labels has always been tenuous, often a butting of heads over creative desires and business strategies; Sara Bareilles said last year that her 2007 hit Love Song, in which she sings that she is “not gonna write you a love song/ `Cause you asked for it, `cause you need one,” doubled as a frustrated response to “feeling invisible” to her label, which she told Glamour magazine she felt was being “withholding” because she didn't have a big radio-ready single.
But Halsey's complaints shone a light on the specific strain some artists experience when expected to produce additional content for Tiktok, a platform that tends to reject artificiality. Teams of people contribute to marketing campaigns, but viral Tiktok moments often hinge upon the authenticity of the artists themselves creating the videos. It works for artists such as Doja Cat, who is adept at performing for an online audience, while others find it more unnatural.
“When music is finished and you're a major label artist, it's traditionally quite a while before it
comes out,” said Marc Plotkin, a music business professor at New York University.
“They're not waiting so long because they have to manufacture CDS, like in the '90s. They want to tee up enough attention. The shortcut to that is if you have millions of followers on Tiktok.”
According to Plotkin, Tiktok dominates marketing conversations more than other platforms did in the past, whether Facebook or Instagram. But the attention can be a little misleading, he said, adding that he is “entirely concerned with conversion to platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. We could have a Tiktok video that gets four million plays, and 15 of those people want to go listen.”
Brandon Stosuy, a music manager who co-founded the company Zone 6, found the intense focus on Tiktok to be a natural extension of how labels have always operated. He recalled when, in the early 1990s, labels scrambled to sign grunge bands in response to Nirvana's massive success.
“Some things got signed that were good, some were terrible, some made no sense,” Stosuy said. “That's the trend you see with major and independent labels over the years, where something works for one person so they want to re-create that success for another person. You can't predict Tiktok, if something is going to go viral or not. It's hard to re-create that.”