How TikTok forever changed the emerging artist struggle

In spring 2022, Zach Montana grasped his dream.

Zach is sitting in his dad’s truck after a shift at work. He finds a CD in the player. He listens. “Whoa, this is really good … Oh my God. That’s my dad.”

The track he’s found is one of his dad’s unreleased disco recordings from the 1970s. So, he opens TikTok and hits the record button. And his life changes forever.

The video blows up overnight. It goes viral – to the tune of over 1 million likes on this video to date. He has no time for his classes. He’s taking phone calls, responding to texts.

“Everybody wants a piece all of a sudden. Everybody wants to blow you up. I was 20, and I bought it.”

Major publications reach out, and then he gets a call from the team behind “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” They invite Zach and his dad to perform the song on national television. They’re flown out to Los Angeles, put up in a hotel, trotted around like celebrities.

He meets Robert Pattinson and the Foo Fighters. It’s unforgettable for a 20-year-old who’s been making music since he was 13, back when he practiced guitar every day trying to learn a Green Day song, broke a string after a month, and then discovered an urge to keep playing that consumed him.

“That’s when I realized it was more than just a hobby,” Zach said. “After that, I started taking it seriously and just knew that that’s what I wanted to do.”

Seven years later, he still wants more than anything to make it. And he’s here, finally recognized, finally on stage – but just for a moment. It quickly fades. And it wasn’t even his song.

These days, the virality has passed. Although Zach still boasts over 80,000 followers on TikTok, almost all of which stem from this one video, the views are nowhere close. And it’s unlikely they will be ever again.

Forest of the internet

He’s not alone. Though Zach’s case is extreme, there are countless artists, thousands of saplings in the forest of the internet, fighting for even a brief glimpse of stardom.

Even though extreme virality can be a life-changing blessing, most artists understand the lottery-like chances. Even so, artists still hunting for a taste are content to take their chances with the system.

Metallic Malik, or Malik Abdul-Hakim, has been making music since his sophomore year of high school. He’s graduating with a degree in interdisciplinary arts and performance from Arizona State University in December, and though his craft has improved, the numbers haven’t jumped yet.

Back then, Abdul-Hakim was ducking his lanky 5’11 frame into his bedroom closet to record an idea or a song. There was no air conditioning, and it wasn’t very soundproofed. He used Audacity to record his vocals through a USB gaming mic connected to an old laptop, and spent much of his time performing to the walls of his bedroom.

“After every single session, it’d be terrible,” he said. “But the next day, I’d wake up and I’d go back.”

The bedroom-art lifestyle is familiar to many Generation Z musicians. Despite its shortcomings, it can be easy in there. It’s free of pressure, free of judgment.

But then there’s an itch – an itch to get the music out of the bedroom, as fun and free as it is. An itch to make the music work for you: performances, fans, money. As much as anyone loves the art itself, making it into a career is often the only option for sustainability.

So, many artists then turn to social media. It’s easy, it’s free and it feels like the only way to make it. Though it can start for fun, the line quickly blurs between the feeling of “hobby” and the pressure of “job.”

“I started creating content for it when I felt like I had to,” Zach said. “It’s not something that I particularly enjoy.”

Anyone can be, so everyone wants to be

In many ways, it’s easier to become a musician now than it has ever been. An industry previously marred by corporate barriers is now accessible for anyone with a device that can access the internet. That’s the selling point, right?

It’s physically easier and more accessible to do almost anything now than it was 20 years ago. Everything is accessible online – you can learn anything and acquire any skill set. But that doesn’t mean the challenges that come with limitless access are irrelevant.

Oversaturation, for one, is a problem more sinister than it may seem. Anyone can be an artist, so everyone wants to be an artist. Trying to cultivate a music career online and organically in the 2020s is akin to a Sisyphean task.

According to a November 2021 TikTok study, 67% of the app’s users are more likely to look for songs on streaming platforms after hearing them on the app. It’s safe to assume this number is higher now, which leads more and more artists to the platform in search of their big break.

Imagine opening up social media every day just to scroll or take your mind off work, but it is also your job. Even pushing this thought away to just mind-numbingly doom scroll through TikTok will be quickly beaten back when you see a viral video by another artist who makes similar music to you.

It has 50,000 likes. Your last video had 200 views. What could you possibly be doing wrong?

But not all artists have a negative relationship with social media. It can be a tool, and a necessary tool at that, for making music work as a career.

For Malik, the relationship currently feels positive.

He didn’t start creating content for his music until he attended ASU and started taking the career seriously. Around 2021, he realized almost all of what he posted on social media was promoting his music.

His most viral post was from 2022, a silly Instagram reel with over 260,000 likes. As with Zach, it also wasn’t his music. But he still creates and posts complementary content.

“There’s a spotlight that people are allowed to be in front of, like an online stage that people can be propped up on and share themselves,” Malik said. “And if people like it, people like it. You get boosted onto the algorithm.”

The meritocracy that the internet promises can be a reality. Sometimes, you don’t need the silly or clickbait tactics to succeed. The music just needs to be good enough.

“I don’t know what I would’ve done without content, it’s what got me on the map for music, and I really like doing it,” said Marloma, another Arizona artist. “It’s another way I can get creative.”

“I don’t know another way to promote my music. I’ve only ever lived in the generation where you can do that on social media. We’re past the time where you can go knock on a record label’s door.”

Marloma, also known as Alexis Meyers, an ASU junior studying pop music, has been making music since before she was comfortable enough to put her face on it. She now has around 60,000 combined followers on Instagram and TikTok, and her content – as well as her face – has become her brand.

She found her first success early in her freshman year in the ASU pop music program after a video of her playing drums went viral. A professor told her to capitalize on this by posting every day, and she followed this advice for over two years.
Though like most artists, she hasn’t found consistent virality, she’s still used social media as a tool and tried her best to disarm its negative effects.

Marloma had to work on her own craft in music, use content strategies and cultivate a community outside of the internet to best turn this virality to her benefit, but she said going viral was “100% necessary” for her.

“I don’t know if I would be doing this if I didn’t post my first viral video,” Marloma said.”I love making content, I love editing. I found a huge love for that when I started making the content.”

Finding a creative outlet in content creation has helped her balance the two, but she’s recently stopped her two-year-long streak of daily posting. Though she still posts often, taking a step back from the pressure of social media has helped Marloma find a healthy balance.

“I’ve turned off all of my notifications on social media,” Marloma said. “As much as you don’t want (content) to affect your self-esteem,” it does.

The lasting consequences

However, even at its best, despite the spark social media can give to these small artists’ careers, the content machine of social media can result in significant challenges, as the false promise of virality looms largely in the back of artists’ minds.

The pursuit of creating content to keep up with trends is often a gateway to compromising the art itself, which undermines the reason most musicians create content in the first place.

For some artists, like Yungbc, aka Bannon Clark, finding a balance between what kind of trends to follow and what kind of creative image you have of yourself can be somewhat of a dilemma.

“You’ve got TikTok and you have all these things, you kind of succumb to it,” Yungbc said. “Now I can be the old head and complain about it, but also, I’ve got to adjust to that as an artist, because that’s what people want.”

But what he’s found personally is where the line is. Yungbc said he’s not someone who will compromise his vision of himself and his art just for a few extra clicks – whether that’s following TikTok trends, dances or anything else. He doesn’t take issue with others who do, but it just isn’t him.

Yet the art of separating the two is difficult and intricate. Especially during the early years of balancing content and artistry, many artists experience a blurred line between the music they want to make and the music they feel pressured to create because of the algorithm.

For Zach Montana, his relationship with social media after viral fame wasn’t perfect.

“It can totally bleed into the art if you’re not careful. That’s why getting away from it lately has been important for me, because my actual music needed to improve, and it definitely has,” Zach said.

“I’d sometimes start thinking about my art in terms of, ‘Oh, this line could be really great for this video.’ And you know what, I think all that stuff that I put out and marketed was shit.”

It’s not just the music that suffers when social media success moves to the forefront of a musician’s mind. Mental health is almost always hit harder.

“I can try and follow the data, but it just gets you nowhere but a headache and hurt feelings,” Zach said.”It’s too shackling of a feeling to be able to get creative work done as well as (content), because you get bogged down with numbers and, ‘Oh, it’s not doing well,’ and then that discourages you from making the music.”

Especially after consistently producing content around your music, it’s clear how the motivation can slow and the doubt can fester.

Like it or not, views and engagement are like gold stars and serotonin boosts for artists. It’s based on something that’s completely out of the creator’s control, but will naturally affect the view of the content and its quality, at least somewhat.
“If I go on a two-week, three-week spree of posting content, I feel so drained. I don’t know what it is, like something took the life out of me … like, ‘300 views, that’s it?'” Malik said. “I know I talk about not worrying about that stuff, but dang, it gets you because you want that to be a good representation of all the work you put in.”

It’s natural, human, even, to want gratification and recognition for something you worked hard on. But even when the fault doesn’t lie with the content quality itself, the success just might not be there.

“When you’re not seeing that (social media success) initially, and the gratification is delayed, it’s harder to hold on to that vision that you see in yourself,” Malik said.

So Malik said he’s found that taking breaks when his mental health tells him to has been a helpful solution. However, social media also values consistency in posting above almost all else – and the dilemma can become more jarring.
It doesn’t help that there are countless artists out there who all want the same thing, and it’s hard to rationalize taking a break when it could feel like losing ground, losing momentum.

And often, other artists are either friends or collaborators. In a perfect world, everyone succeeds together, but that’s not reality.

“It’s a sense of community and kind of a rat race,” Malik said. “But you can’t really have one without the other.”
For now, Malik plans to put his mental health over his online presence. After his December graduation, he has no plans to stop making music.

And despite the struggles of the craft, the worries of livelihood and the seemingly endless climb with no guarantee of reaching the top – or even a false peak, for that matter – he plans to keep scaling. As long as it takes.

“If I’m willing to go through going to college, trying to build a fanbase and make friends and build a community, struggling at the same time, I must really be passionate about this,” Malik said. “So it’s a reminder to myself of how much it actually means to me.”

Zach spent October completely off all social media. Upon returning, he said he felt more confident and inspired. If he gets an idea for something he wants to film and post, he does it – and he doesn’t beat himself up when he doesn’t.

Being overly worried about streams and views distracted him from what was actually genuinely fulfilling: making something he’s proud of and simply putting it out into the world. It’s not worth stressing out about what exactly viewers like, or don’t.

“I’m just enjoying the connective part of the app,” Zach said. “I want to make this thing, and I want to share it with people, instead of trying to shove my music down their throats so I get money. I’m just trying to connect with them through music. And that, to me, is a much healthier approach.”

As for the past, Zach said he’s at peace with his experience and doesn’t worry about the supposed “what-ifs” or missed opportunities. Performing on Jimmy Kimmel was a good time. He had fun. Zach got to hang out with his dad, enjoy his music and see him continue his own dream.

It took “Surrender To Me,” the song that started it all, nearly 50 years to be heard and appreciated. So, why should Zach be down about “missing his big break” over music he created at just 20?

“Looking back, I just don’t think my music was good enough,” he said.

Looking forward, Zach said he’s ready for a change of scenery. Soon, he’ll be moving to Seattle. But he’ll still be creating, wherever he is. That much won’t change anytime soon.

“The music scene there feels really collaborative, instead of competing for limited resources,” Montana said. “It feels like there’s a lot of stuff going on, but at the same time, it’s wide open.”