"I never see people dancing on TikTok anymore," says Chelsey Louise, frontperson of Fairy Bones and a music marketing professional with Poor Life Choice.
Instead, what Louise and other local artists see are their many cohorts using the platform to try and build their careers and make vital inroads with labels, booking agents, and more.
"Name me another platform right now that people scroll with the sound on," Louise says. "This is the perfect platform, and I just feel like that hasn't clicked for a lot of people yet. I wish there were more musicians on there doing this."
For rapper-performer Bryan "Dadadoh" Preston, he says the platform is representative of how people actually make and consume music and art these days.
"Whether you're making music, and someone is streaming, or someone makes really cool videos, all of that is intertwining into self-expression," he says. "And TikTok is a good platform for that."
Matt Aldawood, who leads the band Troubled Minds, agrees with that very point, and adds that TikTok has become a vanguard of sorts for novel video content.
"You can consume a lot of content in a short amount of time," says Aldawood. "But you don't have to finish watching a 15-second video."
He adds, "This is kind of the resurgence of what MTV did in the '80s. Its [music videos] are the equivalent of a viral TikTok today. It's [mostly] the same way now, except you're just channel surfing in a way. If you get your algorithm to send you bands ...TikTok understands what you'd like to see, and then they'll start sending you that kind of stuff."
But unlike old-guard places a la MTV, TikTok is far more open.
"You don't have to impress anyone to start," Aldawood says. "You don't have to get picked up by a label that's going to fund your video. All of those hoops have been completely removed."
And, as someone who's been playing music for some time, Aldawood notes that TikTok is truly singular in its appeal and promise.@troubledmindsaz this is probably my favorite riff i’ve ever written #riff #guitar #liveandinconcert #diyshows #fyp ♬ like i used to be - Troubled Minds
"I've been playing in bands since 2009. I've seen MySpace and Facebook," he says. "[TikTok] is just a really cool platform where people can share and discover music, and I haven't seen anything like this in my lifetime."
Preston adds to that line of thinking, and explains the sort of king-making power of TikTok that once belonged to other platforms and mediums.
"People are discovering Metallica through Stranger Things, you know what I mean," he says. “People doing weird dances that are being copied and shared — that's how music is getting discovered now."
But TikTok's not alone — places like YouTube and Instagram offer the same kind of short video content. Only as these artists told us, none of them seem to match TikTok's pure potential.
"When you're scrolling on Instagram, you're going to see a bunch of ads that are really blatant and in-your-face; it's become a shopping hub, essentially," Louise says. "Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube keep changing their algorithm to try to keep up with TikTok. So, then why don't you just go to TikTok?"
TikTok is so effective, as Aldawood mentions, that few other venues, including YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, have had nearly the effect of even one well-positioned TikTok.
"There was not a show or a Spotify playlist placement or a music video or single release or even tour that ever even got a fraction of what Tiktok has done for us," Aldawood says.
He's referring to the moment fairly recently when Troubled Minds' song "like i used to be" went viral on TikTok. The results, Aldawood mentions, were quite immediate.
"We went from under 1,000 monthly [Spotify] listeners to around 20,000 monthly listeners in a week or two," he says. (The band currently has 15,280.) "There were bands that I really liked, that are fairly popular bands, that started reaching out to me, which was insane."
Louise, meanwhile, says she's also seen success, albeit less to do with a song blowing up and more about other forms of content.
"I've found a good amount of success on TikTok," she says. "I have a video with over 2 million views. I have a couple with 150,000 views. I have absolutely seen a boost, but mostly in person. I get comments about my TikTok constantly."
She adds, "I was talking about Meghan Trainor; I don't even like Meghan Trainor. I just found that the marketing behind her last single was really, really interesting. So I like music marketing, and I was like, 'Okay, talk about music marketing, because that's what you like — and it worked."
Even small feats on the app still have a large enough effect on bands. Justin Weir of Celebration Guns tells a story about sending a note to Mike Park, whose own Asian Man Records has a sizable enough following on TikTok.@fairybonessucks #StuckInPringles #greenscreen #meghantrainor #mother #musicmarketing #musicindustry #brand #musicians ♬ Made You Look (Pringles) - Meghan Trainor
"I didn't hear anything for months," Weir says. "Then I just start getting tagged in on his TikTok saying, 'Should I sign this band?' We got, like, 1,000 likes and 112 comments and 13,000 views. We did get about 100 new followers in a week."
And while Weir and company appreciated the small bump, he notes that it can be fleeting.
"It's a huge deal, but in the end, it didn't really do much," he says.
Weir's comment expertly highlights a vital element of TikTok: mega-stardom isn't for everyone, and the app and its algorithm can control who has access to these career-changing opportunities.
"Because I hate the idea of having to play the game for any of this shit," Weir says. "We're not cool dudes. We're in our 30s and 40s, and we're not stylish or eye-catching. It just doesn't feel like we're in the same spot to engage people that way."
While someone like Louise recognizes the frustration, she says there are ways around that without affecting an artist's sense of self-respect.
"If you are a musician, you're going to have to market yourself," Louise says. "So if a trend is happening, you want to adapt it to your field immediately. UPSAHL, who's from Arizona, she does a fun thing where she takes trending sounds and sings with them and makes them into a really short song."
She adds, "So this is a really good platform to create what makes you comfortable. Remember when we all started on Instagram, and we wanted the perfect curated feed? And then you wanted such perfectly staged photos? And I think it just got so fake. We got bored of it. I think [TikTok] absolutely translates to real-world results. But I don't want to say it's just going to because I make sure it does."
For his part, Weir recognizes that same notion, and mentions that the way forward may be focusing solely on the music and not the gimmicks and gags.
"I've seen the dumbest, most basic guitar riffs blow up," he says. "If we're not trying to be fake, or talk a bunch of shit that doesn't mean anything, we could try to find a good way to showcase our musical talent because people do like watching that. I feel like us, as a band, we are actually funny and genuine. But we don't know how to display that naturally."
Preston, meanwhile, recognizes similar downsides of TikTok — namely, people flocking to ideas/concepts until everything becomes an oversaturated meme.@asianmanrecords SHOULD I SIGN THIS BAND? #PUNK #DIY #EMO #INDIE #RECORDLABRL #FYP #fypシ #ASIANMANRECORDS #MIKEPARK ♬ original sound - ASIAN MAN RECORDS
"I think the idea of trends could definitely be a double-edged sword," he says. "Obviously, we're all coming together, and we're agreeing that this is funny. But then it also sets up a blueprint for what people expect to be funny, right? Or what good music is considered to be."
Luckily, Louise has a kind of "formula" of sorts for making effective TikToks that doesn't involve doing anything indignant.
"Put your lyrics on the fucking screen," she says. "Use the native editor. You don't need 1,500 hashtags; pick three that make sense."
It also helps to know the biggest audience across TikTok.
"They're the nicest friggin' generation," Louise says of Gen Z, who, as of 2021, comprise 60 percent of the app's 2 billion downloads (per Fanbytes). "They aren't as easily influenced by the world as we [millennials] were. So as long as you're not pretending to be somebody you're not, which they [Gen Z] don't like."
It's with all of this in mind that perhaps someone like Dadadoh/Preston has the right approach in mind. Because while he's seen some results from his presence on TikTok, he's tried to get more out of the app than song streams and fresh followers.
"I don't think it has helped my music as much as it helps me as an artist," Preston says, adding that his "music's a little blue at times" to go viral. He continues, "Because [TikTok's] really opened my eyes to a lot more possibilities and being in more control of my art and how people can consume it. At the end of the day, I think people are buying you more than they're buying your music. That's why [TikTok] is a really good place to express more than just your music."
But if nothing else, at least TikTok supports local artists and other creators in a way often unmatched by other platforms.
"And that kind of ties into the ability to make money on [Instagram]. I tried to go live on Instagram during the pandemic," Preston says. "I spent a lot of time and energy doing that, and it's just not a platform that's set up for that. But TikTok, you can make money every single month. I think that's why some people don't like it — they're not getting that money, right?"
And that issue, Preston notes, is maybe why TikTok is in danger of being banned in the U.S. (per CBS News). While the debate still rages on Capitol Hill — there are concerns about the security of data among certain politicians — these local artists are already preparing for what might come next.@dadadoh “Pack a Lunch” Full Video On YouTube NOW! 🤘🏾🤘🏾⚡️⚡️#rock #hiphop #punk #art ♬ Pack a Lunch - Dadadoh & The P.O.C.
Louise notes that an outright banning could be bad, as TikTok is "where you can find the only other weirdo in the world who does the weird thing you do."
Still, Louise isn't entirely cynical about TikTok's chances. She notes that as the app launches longer forms of video (now up to 10 minutes), TikTok's competition could become Netflix in a "kind of streaming wars thing." And while she doesn’t have proof, she’s even heard "that people are using Tiktok to search more often than Google at this point — it's like Reddit combined with YouTube." (A fall 2022 piece from The New York Times backs up that claim.)
Meanwhile, Aldawood thinks that if TikTok goes away, "what's going to happen is Instagram Reels are going to get more popular," adding, "And it's nice to have both of the apps so that way you have two chances of getting big."
Both Preston and Weir, however, noted that TikTok has huge value outside of blowing up careers in art and music. Preston points to videos of the Kia Boys — youths who basically record how-to videos on stealing Kia and Hyundai vehicles — as causes manufacturers to bolster security features. It’s a little thing, but it’s one that shows the true power of this former dancing app.
"It’s just another testament to us making bad decisions and not embracing the future as a country," Preston says of a possible ban. "We could totally be Tokyo if we wanted to."
Adds Weir, "There's still so many things happening in the world, and I would've never experienced or seen it without being able to scroll through TikTok."
So, with TikTok's future up in the air, even amid its ongoing influence culturally and beyond, conversations about the platform’s larger costs and value seem doubly important. Weir, especially, raises some important ideas: what makes TikTok work isn't the excitement of Gen Z, the stream metrics, the ease of use, or the endless memes and trends. It's how artists and musicians are more closely exploring their efforts, and trying to figure out what's best for their careers and bodies of work.
"It's already weird enough putting yourself out there in public...and then you put it on [TikTok] and it's like, what am I really expecting," Weir says. "Do I want people to see this and think I'm talented? So I think it's setting your sights and trying to be focused...if I really wanted to grow our reach and find people who actually like our music and not some random [person] who may not care to listen or even like what we do."
