Sienna Miller | Writer
October 28, 2022
Over the past couple of years, an abundant amount of artists have promoted themselves and become famous through TikTok. Since then, more and more musicians have turned to mainstream sounds, and superficial lyricists have grown in popularity. Many blame TikTok.
Influencers like Dixie D’amelio and Lil Huddy originally grew famous through dancing and being in the TikTok hype house. Both individuals are now putting music out and their songs have hit the hot 100 Billboard charts. Most recently, on October 25th, Charlie D’amelio dropped her first song “if you ask me to”. It has gone viral all over TikTok, and it again has a very general sound.
Although this might benefit them as celebrities, it is slowly damaging people’s perception of good music. “They can neither sing, write, or produce their own songs,” said senior Luka Horspool. “They are not real musicians, yet their music has become super popular and I hear them on the radio all time.”
During TikTok musician Leah Kate’s performance, the audience made it a viral trend to play Subway Surfers instead of watching the show because of how many people hate her generic TikTok music. However, her song “10 things I hate about you” was on the hit music charts for 34 weeks.
Although music is often a matter of personal preference, it’s not a challenge to recognize bad musicians from good ones. Regardless of genre, artists should be judged on the complex sounds of their instrumentals and how they react with one another. Song should also be critiqued on the level of depth and eloquence that the musician expresses through their lyrics. TikTok artists have been branching away from this systematic assessment of good music and leaning toward a more boring sound.
“Musicians like Queen, The Beatles, Led Zepplin, Joan Jett, and The Cure don’t exist anymore,” sophomore Elora Aguliar said. “Popular music is not like it used to be. There is little to no art in today’s mainstream music, and in my opinion, TikTok is the reason.”
TikTok has ruined both the bad songs and the rare, good-sounding songs produced today. Listening to a great song over and over is completely conventional, but when you listen to the same 10 seconds clip for hours as you scroll through the endless cache of videos on your phone, the song can become extremely tedious. It has been scientifically proven through a series of experiments conducted by Dr. Michael Bonshor of The University of Sheffield that if a song is overplayed, especially those with a generic sound, your brain will no longer enjoy the song. TikTok has been doing this to every song that has gone viral on the app, and after a while, the song will slowly fade out of people’s videos.
Although TikTok music often might be categorized as bad and overplayed, cynics also have to admit that Tiktok has made it easy to access new music. It may not be better in quality but it is in quantity. TikTok is helping smaller artists promote their music more efficiently. A song can go viral in a matter of hours all because of the app’s algorithm.
“Although a lot of TikTok music is bad, it also helped me find great artists like musician Elliott Fullman who originally went viral for having good taste in music and cool vinyl records,” sophomore Katie McKay said. “Months later he blew up for releasing/promoting, what is in my opinion, one of the best alternative indie albums of the year, ‘What’s Wrong.’ He also just dropped a new album called ‘You Are Dreaming’ just this week. I would never have found his music if it wasn’t for TikTok.”
Although this is true, it is impossible to overlook the circumstances of his success. as 70% of today’s music market consists of old songs and musicians. Recently, the hit music business is growing smaller while older music is progressively increasing. TikTok is forcing everyone, even teenagers, to go back in time to listen to good music that isn’t overused.
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