A Possible TikTok Shutdown Has Music Industry Nervous

TikTok has become the dominant platform for burgeoning artists to make a name for themselves; not only via their own short-form videos, but those of others who use their music to soundtrack their own content, reports The L-A Times.

Artists from Doja Cat to Lizzy McAlpine to Ice Spice, to name but a few, have enjoyed meteoric rises thanks in part to the platform, connecting with fans through humor, authenticity or both. The app has also given second life to songs whose moment had seemingly passed — look no further than Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 hit “Dreams,” which resurfaced on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2020.

Last year, TikTok’s end-of-year report highlighted that all but one of the 14 songs that topped the Billboard Hot 100 were “driven by significant viral trends on TikTok,” from Harry Styles “As It Was” to Jack Harlow’s “First Class” to Steve Lacy’s “Bad Habit.”

“In the early days of streaming, people said it would democratize music,” said Bill Werde, who directs Syracuse University’s Bandier music program and publishes the Full Rate No Cap newsletter. “But I don’t think it did, because when you lower that barrier of entry, it becomes very difficult to break through. Major labels, and other companies and artists with substantial marketing budgets, were really advantaged on Spotify.

“TikTok came along though, and really turned that notion on its head,” Werde continued. “Anyone could break on TikTok, and anyone did break.”

In the United States, however, TikTok faces an uncertain future. Earlier this month, the White House endorsed a bill that would give President Biden the authority to ban TikTok in the United States, or force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the app, to sell to an American company. Government officials have called the app a “national security threat,” citing the potential for China to force Bytedance to turn over the data of its American users, or spread misinformation to turn its citizens against its country.