How A TikTok Ban Could Affect The Music Industry

Concerns over Chinese surveillance and inappropriate content have led to a surge in support for a TikTok ban in the US. This follows bans on the use of apps on government-issued devices in the United States and several other countries. Banned in India. It’s not clear how the U.S. government could enforce such a ban, but the potential has caused many industries to ponder how it might affect their business. At the top is the music industry.

After six years of ultra-rapid growth, TikTok is now the third-largest social network among social networks, behind Facebook and Instagram (both owned by Meta) and ahead of Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat, according to at least one source. has the second largest number of users. Entertainment is by far the largest content category for his TikTok videos, and by a large margin, but it’s unclear how much of it is specifically related to music. This is because the categories within “Entertainment” are ambiguous on TikTok. While many of his TikTok stars become famous for lip-syncing, dancing his routines, or other videos set to someone else’s music, far fewer are artists who deliver or deliver. You can even promote your own music on the app.

To understand the impact on the music industry if TikTok disappears from the US market, it helps to understand the impact on business so far. To that end, it’s helpful to consider TikTok in the light of its natural predecessor, YouTube. YouTube took the music industry on a journey that TikTok is expanding today.

YouTube is now the world’s largest distributor of music of all kinds. For example, the biggest hits tend to get more plays on Spotify than their official videos are watched on YouTube, but their use especially in music is much higher than on Spotify. The main reason for this is that while YouTube’s main service is free, Spotify’s main service charges a subscription fee and is constantly working to steer free-tier users to paid services. is.

But another big reason for YouTube’s popularity is its relative independence from the music industry. Spotify only accepts music feeds from record labels (or digital distributors like Distro Kid or CD Baby), but anyone can upload videos with music to YouTube. While Spotify didn’t launch in the U.S. until after it signed deals with major record labels, YouTube has spent its first two years of existence holding copyright and usage rights associated with the vast amount of music owned by its users. I didn’t get involved in the fee issue. Uploading.

The same was true of TikTok, which had music specifically in mind from the very beginning when it acquired Musical.ly. This is another Chinese app that allows users to create lip-syncing videos. Otherwise, TikTok’s early disregard for music copyright issues allowed it to build a huge user base while negotiating with record labels and music publishers. Just like YouTube he signed a licensing deal with a major label around 2011, TikTok he got a license from a major label by early 2021.

Still, TikTok has moved further away from music industry dominance than YouTube. For example, YouTube has many “official” artist channels and label releases, but TikTok does not give special status to big music stars, and even less to labels. TikTok users can give themselves any username they like and the app does not verify their real identities. For example, there are her TikTok users with names like Lady Gaga, ladygaga, Ladygaga, LADY GAGA, Lady Gaga Daily. And it’s not clear which of these are Lady Gaga’s real accounts. We focus on users, not music artists. TikTok also treats his audio clips like other social hashtags on his network. Group videos that use the same music clip to make it easier for users to create new videos with the music from the clip they’re watching. Features like this can help increase the exposure of music clips, but they also distract the artists who create them.

Another sign of TikTok’s greater autonomy is the ability to create its own music stars independently of the record label system. YouTube has spawned several breakout megastars like Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepsen, PSY and Luis Fonsi. Yet most of these had backing from major labels and management in the first place. YouTube has primarily helped us gain exposure in markets outside our home country, including the United States. By contrast, TikTok’s biggest music stars (at least based on revenue) such as Bella Poarch, Dixie D’Amelio and Loren Gray were likely discovered on TikTok before signing with a record label.

TikTok has also had a greater impact on the creative output of music artists than YouTube. Perhaps the biggest impact YouTube has had on creative output has been the explosion of artist collaborations, such as pop songs dropped in by rappers. Music discovery on YouTube is based more on search than on playlists or other forms of navigation, and collaboration makes it more likely that artists will appear in search results. So at least a quarter of his Billboard Hot 100 songs today tend to be collaborations. Otherwise, YouTube’s impact on creative output isn’t all that different from Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming services.

In contrast, artists are doing more to create music content suitable for TikTok. The main driver for this is TikTok’s focus on short clips, while YouTube allowed up to most song lengths in its early days. Some artists post full-length song clips on her TikTok to promote them, driving traffic to Spotify and other streaming services. For example, R&B star Steve His Lacey noticed that his live show audience didn’t know the lyrics to his number one hit “Bad Habit” other than the words used in a short clip. rice field. 500,000 of his TikTok videos. There is also some evidence that TikTok is influencing songwriters to start songs with choruses and other hooks that can grab attention within 15-20 seconds. decades.

But above all, there is growing evidence that maintaining a constant presence on TikTok is becoming necessary for artists wanting to build a fanbase. And some artists resent having to feed that beast every day (on top of all other social networks). This trend increases the percentage of social media savvy artists topping the charts, increasing the amount of nagging. It’s what labels and artist managers have to do to keep them.

Conversely, the proliferation of new songs on all these services makes discovering new songs more difficult. Also, the unparalleled ease of posting original videos to clips of famous songs on TikTok has increased the exposure of older “catalog” music. For example, Fleetwood Mac’s stunning revival of his 1977 hit “Dreams” in his 2020 TikTok video. The song re-entered the charts, rumor The album took second place in 2022 sales. This is one trend that big music companies and private equity firms that are buying catalogs of legacy music artists want to encourage.

So what would happen to the music industry without TikTok? Industry majors might be content with this, given how TikTok has escalated its tendency to overtake YouTube. yeah. But otherwise, not so much. First of all, a US ban does not imply a worldwide ban. As YouTube’s experience has shown, the popular service helps artists go global with far less effort than before.

More generally, the power TikTok has set in motion will continue elsewhere.Google
goog
and Meta launched TikTok competitors YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels respectively. Last month, Google claimed that his YouTube Shorts surpassed his 50 billion views per day, and Meta is making Reels available to her massive Facebook audience. There are also other apps such as Triller and Likee. According to Edison Research’s latest Infinite Dial consumer survey, published two weeks ago, TikTok usage will peak in his 2022 and is now on the decline. It is hard to imagine that this is because users are fed up with addictive apps that push attractive short music videos to their phones. Users may go elsewhere for the same kind of experience, and the impact on the music industry will continue.