Tik Tok is Changing the Music Industry

Social media has changed the way that listeners can interact with artists and their favorite songs, and Tik Tok is no exception. Especially in recent months, Tik Tok has changed the way that artists go about releasing new music.

Artists now have the ability to get their song trending on Tik Tok before it is even released, and this just tends to build up more hype for the eventual release of the song as users make dances and videos using the little bit of the song that they currently have access to. Nicki Minaj recently did this with her newest song “Super Freaky Girl“ and first teased the song with no mention of when the release date would be. Fans went crazy and responded with lots of viral videos, blowing the song up weeks before they even got to hear the whole thing.

When the song did release it continued to do well on Tik Tok too, with the new parts of the song making their way onto the platform and the announcement of a music video. The song is still a trending sound today, and the strategy for building hype around the song worked really well. Even though it can be frustrating to fans to hear part of a song that they really like and have no clue when they will get to hear the whole thing, it keeps them talking about it and building anticipation.

Two artists who are currently in the process of doing this are Sam Smith and Kim Petras with their upcoming release “Unholy.” Both artists have been posting videos with sneak peeks of their new song, sometimes together and sometimes on their own, and the sound has been blowing up on Tik Tok. As far as a release date goes, fans have been told the song will be dropping “soon,” but that’s all they’ve got.

This new level of interaction around artist’s music is something we’ve never seen before, and I’ve loved seeing artists react to videos of their fans dancing to their songs. While trends come and go relatively quickly on Tik Tok, I think this new way of building hype around songs through teasing them as a sound first has lots of potential to become a new normal in the music industry.