With the introduction of more and more capable home studios, artists have been popping up at rates we've never seen before. It's never been easier to record high-quality music on a whim in the comfort of your home. Because of that never before seen phenomenon, there have been some advantages and disadvantages to being an artist in these days and times. nbsp;
For example, the simple fact that on any given day there are over 60,000 songs released - that's roughly 22 million tracks per year. How do you even get heard as an artist? Countering that, there have never been more "viral celebrities" in the history of the world. If you can go viral on Tik-Tok, you can catch your big break. A home studio goes hand in hand with TikTok and all that you need to go viral. But do you really want to be a Tik-Tok artist?
As fans, how do we sift through the music? As labels and talent scouts, how do they find the next up-and-coming talent? Labels have been troubled with that question for decades and decades and they've been battling against indies forever, plagued with the question of how to stay above the competition. It's essential for them to stay ahead of the curve in order to know what the kids are listening to today because let's be honest, record label execs are often old and out of touch with what's going on in these social media streets. They need tools and cheat codes to find talent and artists.
Even though music is an art and is opinion-based, technology has allowed for the commodification of music in 2022 at levels never before. Not just in the creation of music, but in the monitoring and tracking of what's hot on TikTok, IG, and Facebook. Making it make sense and cents in the music business is an art in and of itself - everyone knows Spotify and other streaming platforms only pay fractions of a penny.
There are a plethora of tools and cheat codes for record labels to track artists and their viral moments, but still, labels are losing a greater and greater share of the market to independent artists. Essentially more and more each year, the major labels are proving to be less and less the source for a viral artist, so they have to buy it or sign them to create more.
In a recent study by Pudding data journalists Matt Daniels and Kaylin Dodson, data was compiled about what happens to an artist after they go viral on TikTok. They explained that the framework for this viral moment on Tik-Tok is a typical music industry setup that we have seen for decades and decades. As an artist rises on a specific platform or stage, the music industry takes note of them and promises to propel them to even greater heights on that said platform and others. Traditionally labels offer an advance similar to a bank and the artist has to recoup the advance while getting a sliver of the quarterly earnings going forward while also forfeiting their masters in many cases. nbsp;
Going viral to get signed is not new, but TikTok has become the "it" platform, shooting out viral hits multiple times daily. Now it's as if more and more songs are going viral. In the recent study by Pudding highlighted by Vox they had to narrow it down to 1500 songs that went viral in 2020 and about a third of those artists were breakout artists that ualtimately got signed to majors.
But what makes something go viral? There are various data points that they collected but ultimately it came down to a few major factors for narrowing down their viral artists. How many viral moments does a song or artist create? How does the viral moment correlate with streaming and ultimately touring and merchandise?
Those were the most important parts because what this study found is that there is seemingly a TikTok to Spotify pipeline. After all, a huge part of the culture on TikTok is to hear a song and use it on your video and then stream it on Spotify. And this is exactly what the labels are tracking using various applications and hiring various companies that specialize in data mining and tracking every nuance of the music that goes viral on TikTok and other platforms like IG Reels.
That is the new music industry, a completely data-driven, cherry-picking model that is almost robotic in nature at finding the music that makes people move on TikTok and subsequently other social media platforms and streaming services. TikTok is what makes the kids move and is what has the highest influence of any other social media platform right now. Tik-Tok has a proven ability to influence the purchase of concert tickets or the streaming of an artist's music in seconds.
It’s a mechanical and automated way of getting to the heart of the listener, but this is the core of capitalism as technology is being implemented to find ways to surpass the competition i.e. find new talent or viral artists. Competition has bred genius in the sense that now the music industry which breeds some of the biggest celebrities is using data and traditionally nerdy statistical evaluation methods to find their way to the ears and ultimately hearts of the listener to be cool.
It seems that is the world we are in now because even the listener's emotions are automated by the number of likes, views, and comments that they get. It all comes back full circle to the celebrity-driven world we live in where everyone wants to be someone and making music to share on Tik-Tok helps them be that - no matter who they are and what kind of music they can create in that home studio behind their avatar.