New music is constantly being released, and an era of social media means more opportunities for a big break. An artist is set for life if their song gets used in a viral edit now, but artists are beginning to see a pattern in how to achieve this viral formula, and it’s becoming obvious to many when a song tries to go viral on TikTok. 

TikTok at its heart, has always been a dancing app, music and dancing go hand-in-hand. Even when new forms of content began to emerge on the short-form video app, the core that has built the app to become what it is today has never truly left.

Many people use TikTok to find new song recommendations, as word of mouth has always been one of the most reliable sources for getting recommendations on anything; be it clothes or books, TikTok acts almost as a guide for youths all around the world looking to immerse themselves in something new.

Now, even when users aren’t actively seeking out new music to listen to, they find new songs to add to their playlists. Many people have experienced catching the most interesting song in the background of a boring video, pausing their scrolling sprees to open up the comments, and doing a deep dive to find the title of the masterpiece that just blessed their ears.

While many aspects of the app have remained unchanged, how aspiring musicians use the app has been changed. As one of the most widely used social media platforms now, opportunists see the app in a different light after witnessing its power. It can turn an underground artist famous overnight through one of their songs to a velocity edit of a fictional character.

Business strategies are always evolving, and it is not necessarily a bad thing for artists to look for more exposure on TikTok. Getting publicity on social media is far from unheard of when it comes to artists advertising their music. However, it can not just be music elitists who have noticed the structure of songs changing in a way that some would call “catered to TikTok.”

As a short-form video app, a viewer can only catch around 15 – 30 seconds of a song when it’s attached to a video, and artists have opened their eyes to how much value these few seconds hold. Many people are beginning to think that those seconds of newer songs are all that matter now, every other part is made to “lead up” to the song’s big moment. 

One catchy part or lyric can do a lot for a song, acting almost as a signature to recognize the song. That iconic staple is now what so many newer songs strive to achieve to make trendy short-form content.

In doing this, artists hope to achieve more exposure by encouraging people to check out their songs if that one line or beat caught their attention. However, many are being compelled to do the opposite now. 

Many content creators on TikTok have come on to give their opinions on this matter, talking about how TikTok is changing the way music is made. To make their music marketable on social media, they create a memorable chorus and neglect the other parts that hold the song together. 

It does not take a music connoisseur to notice that songs are structured for every part to contribute to the overall experience: the intro captivates listeners, the verses set the tone for the song, the chorus is the heart of the song and the bridge adds something new to liven things up.

On top of sounding plain bad from the perspectives of so many listeners, this phenomenon is affecting artists negatively, too. Any form of art is a form of expression for the creator, so to have their medium now need to adhere to a certain structure to do well on charts and platforms is restricting. 

Music is no longer a creative outlet for so many artists, and is instead a formula to solve to achieve the correct answer; another trendy song that will be on everyone’s feed for a while before eventually dying down and joining the rest of the “one-hit wonder” music in the back of a metaphoric dusty closet. 

With artists unhappy with the new structure they have to follow in order to get big, and listeners dissatisfied with the quality of the music beyond the one part in every short-form video, one might even go as far as to say that TikTok is ruining music. 

That just might be an exaggeration on their part. Artists are simply adapting to the times and the ever-changing tastes of people simultaneously, trying to find their rhythm while figuring out a sound that appeals to the masses. This simply doesn’t work out for them, so people begin to think music has become bad.

It’s become evident that there is no way to cater to everyone, especially when on a platform as vast as TikTok, everyone’s tastes are too diverse. These attempts at “viral” music through a catchy melody or captivating lyric simply will not cut it, because a song that gets stuck in everyone’s heads is not necessarily a good one. 

Right now, rather than the music industry being in a state of making ‘horrible music,” it could be viewed as artists being in limbo; trying to balance their sounds with their desire to make it big in the industry. This phenomenon of artists making music almost specifically designed for TikTok could be a moment of poor judgement clouded by the urge to get big quickly rather than to stick to one’s sound and aesthetic, building up a loyal fanbase of people who enjoy the consistency of the genre. 

Soon enough, the TikTok-ified music phenomena will pass as artists open their eyes to the fact that music that goes viral on TIkTok has no rhyme or reason to it; what could Imogen Heap’s “Headlock” have in common with “MILLION DOLLAR BABY” by Tommy Richman? 

Right now, artists may be trying hard to cater to TikTok and its style of short-form content, attempting to cram all their song has to offer in a short timespan suited to TikTok’s video format, however, music has always gone through periods of ups and downs as artists attempt to follow the trends. 

This phenomenon should not warrant such criticism now when experimenting has always been a thing. It just may be that this time, the stakes seem higher because fame feels so close to grasping through TikTok when artists have seen it work miracles for many before. 

As time goes by, this period of TikTok-ified music will be behind everyone as part of a “music through the eras” timeline like the Jazz era, or the Classical craze. And if it doesn’t? There’s too much undiscovered music out there to be upset over a handful of songs with repetitive sounds. In the realm of music, there’s always something for everyone.