Did you know? A study found that 84% of songs topping the billboard are TikTok hits. 

In the past few years, TikTok has become a mainstay in the lives of young people everywhere. In almost any situation, you can see people filming themselves doing TikTok dances with their tiny phone cameras. But what songs are they dancing to? The answer is easy: the songs you hear on the radio. 

But What’s the Issue?

Lately, the music industry has been injected with new life, due to TikTok. However, it has also been drained of said life. Songs nowadays aren’t as powerful and emotional as they used to be, and instead are only manufactured to be slam hits.

There have been many music artists that have started creating songs purebred to go viral. There’s Sabrina Carpenter, with “Espresso” and “Please Please Please”, Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road”, and lastly, Benson Boone with his infamous titles “Mystical Magical” and “Beautiful Things” (his army of Crumbl Cookie girls scare me).

If you’ve made a video with the “moonbeam ice cream” audio, congratulations, you’ve fell into the sinkhole. Gone are the days of proper song structure, with bridges and choruses. Greed has crushed anything and everything valuable in today’s music industry. When fledgling artists try to get their music record labeled, the first thing they hear from labels is: “will it go viral on TikTok?”

As shorter and shorter music clips have gained virality, songs with messages that reveal themselves over many minutes of listening have become obsolete. People now only hear 20-30 seconds of the song on TikTok. This is because our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. That’s the reason why you see random asmr clips playing beside clips off of Family Guy on your for you page; that’s the only thing that will make you pay attention to them.

The only thing that matters anymore is creating a catchy and repetitive clip for girls to dance to. Songs like “good 4 u” and “10 things I hate about you” and perfect examples of this.

Kevian Kraemer, a pop-indie musician from New Jersey, shares my sentiments. “[TikTok pushes] the narrative that a song isn’t good unless it has the social media numbers to back it up,” Kraemer said. “Many artists feel less than good enough because the algorithm isn’t pushing their music at a certain point in time.”

Songs with deep and emotional meanings grow ever rare, being replaced with drab songs that (besides the clip that everyone knows) are basically background music. Many artists have succumb to this dreadful fate, especially when they had promise before. I’ve listened to other songs from Benson Boone, and I was pleasantly surprised. Those songs were great. But now, he’s become a TikTok zombie, with oblivious fans chasing him wherever he goes.

Small indie artists and bands reportedly suffer on TikTok. If they try and promote their music on the platform, their videos are pushed to the bottom while videos with trending audios shoot to the top. Having a “Song of the Summer” creates and unfair advantage for the song’s artist. They become unreasonably popular due to people with muddled minds taken over by their For You Page.

So What?

I’m just here to say my piece. As a frequent listener to music, I value the industry and people who work hard to stay afloat in it. Songs are meant to be a way to express deep feelings and emotions. They can also just be fun, or even just tell a story. Music is important to me, and I simply am trying to share the word. Check out smaller artists. Don’t sell your soul to the growing mound of dead TikTok music. There are so many bands out there worth a listen that you’ve probably never even heard of because the algorithm refuses to let them see the light of day. 

Who knows? Maybe you’ll find something you like.