“How has Tiktok’s emphasis on community building within the music industry been able to reach and engage new and old music communities better than traditional music record label models”

 

Abstract

 

In recent years, the music industry has been infiltrated by a prominent force emphasising community building and user-generated content. This specific force is Tiktok. In this paper, we explore how the approach Tiktok has had towards community building has engaged and reached music communities and audiences more effectively than the traditional models that record labels use today. We will draw upon statistics, industry data, and case studies to analyse and examine what makes Tiktok’s community-building techniques unique, including the algorithmic recommendation systems and user-generated content. We will also discuss the implications of Tiktok’s success for the broader music industry community and how it has the potential to disrupt the traditional music industry power structures, providing new opportunities for emerging artists to grow organically and frugally. This paper will argue that Tiktok’s approach to community building offers many valuable insights and can potentially invalidate traditional record labels’ models of community building.

 

1. Introduction

 

In the past few years, social media has been solidified as the new-age mechanic in changing industries and communities across the globe. Marketing has evolved to where traditional tools have become less efficient, and new techniques, such as influencer marketing, have grown exponentially. Influencers have a hardcore fanbase who follow their content for entertainment and inspiration. The fanbase often gives high engagement. Many businesses take advantage of this and have shifted their traditional advertising strategies to include sponsorships and content collaborations with influencers to connect to a wider social media following, creating a heightened genuine and authentic approach than the alternative “in-your-face” marketing. Tiktok has allowed content creators and social media entrepreneurs to trend overnight and become influencers. Music community building in the past without social media was often limited by geographic location, genre, industry connections and reach. However, social media such as Tiktok has enabled the creation of new music communities withstanding these limitations and breaking traditional boundaries where online communities can find artists through each other based on shared interests by the algorithm. The communities can have a massive impact on the success of an artist or a song through high engagement and user-generated content to popularise trends from any genre or culture. These fandoms amplify their undiscovered, underrepresented opinions to build and engage their community leading to a more diverse and inclusive culture in music.

 

1. Background

 

Tiktok, a video-sharing app created in 2016, rose to virality during the Covid-19 pandemic and has become the go-to platform for discovering new music and content (Dever, 2022). SMPERTH (2023) has stated that today Tiktok has approximately 1 billion active users monthly. Many artists have taken advantage of this large population by strategizing their releases by previewing songs, creating trends, and even paying influencers to market their songs. In some cases, songs that trend on Tiktok often end up on the Billboard charts. The rise of Tiktok has changed the music industry in a way where artists do not necessarily need to have a record label deal to become successful and viral. Tiktok requires no or minimal financial investment. Global outreach can occur where the song can become popular in different countries, and the release of music and promotion is done with less effort where the artist can get reactions from releasing samples of their music to understand their audiences better and save time and money investing into a song that may not perform as well. (Influence Digital). However, some argue that record label models are becoming less valuable due to the rise of Tiktok. Some limitations that a record label has, according to Chiftalaryan (2019) are that they have a lack of resources to distribute and market songs successfully, have difficulty promoting unknown artists due to not having adequate knowledge of their audience and demographic, have too much competition where independent artists and smaller labels may have a better position to connect with specific communities, and finally they lack authenticity where they are unable to capture a genuine connection between an artist and their community. Despite this, Tiktok has adapted these limitations with their community building to create a fluid working model helping artists capitalise on their communities at a greater length.

 

III. TikTok’s Community Building Model

 

The concept of Tiktok’s community-building model focuses on algorithms and, most importantly, user-generated content. According to Beveridge (2022), user-generated content is any form of content, whether it be videos, images, and reviews created by people rather than brands. From a music marketing perspective, this shows that the content that can be made is genuine and can hold endless creativity users can create or engage in popular trending content that can extend to a larger audience. This is important as an artist’s fanbase can build a wider community by posting content that catches attention through trends. This also humanises the artist’s brand and creates authenticity for the new audience. With the emphasis on user participation, content can be shared in several ways, according to (Indie Music Academy). Some methods include Dance videos: A viral trend with a short dance can be made for the song that a demographic of mostly girls would spread and engage in. Memes: Humorous content, having the song on the video with context either relating or not relating to the song. Trending Content: Some user-generated content with the song that is trending, even if it is not humorous, just because the content of the video fits with the song. Challenges: Users can engage with a challenge to try their cover or remix of the song. Influencer Collaborations: An influencer with a wider audience may use the song when creating their content, boosting the reach of the song’s success.

Moreover, user-generated content would only be useful if it became a viral trend. The process of content becoming viral runs through Tiktok’s algorithm for every user.
According to Newberry (2023), Tiktok’s key ranking system for their recommendation to new audiences works through factors such as user interactions, where the ‘For You Page’ recommends content based on what the user follows, posts, likes, favourites, marked as “favourite” or “not interested”, watched repeatedly, creates, completes watching a video, and interacts with interest to organic content and advertisements. Another way content is recommended to new audiences is from video information, such as interacting with videos with similar captions, sounds, effects, trending topics and hashtags. Hashtags are important as they can be followed and introduce the video to different subcultures, communities, and topics for a wider spread. An example of a successful campaign combining user-generated content and the Tiktok algorithm is the rise of Lil Nas X. According to Strapagiel (2019), the song “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X had a genre mix of Hip-hop and Country and propelled to 1# on Billboard Hot 100 from a trending meme where people drank “yee-yee juice” transforming them into a cowboy. The song became famous due to a successful trend from user-generated content and great placement on the Tiktok algorithm. Some artists, however, have their songs go viral even being unaware of the platform due to the pure strong content from their audience (Peter & Riemer, 2021).

 

1. Comparison with Traditional Record Label Models

 

Compared to Tiktok’s approach to community building, record label models involve work with radio stations, advertisements, music blogs, music videos and merchandise. However, these strategies can be fulfilled by an independent artist who uses Tiktok as these strategies can be sought out independently nowadays due to high networking and connectivity in social media. For an independent artist, advertising can be set up and paid for out of pocket for a low investing amount, music blogs can be emailed and messaged through social media if the social media presence is strong, and music videos can be created through local visual creatives and edited by freelancers online. Merchandise can be made through various mock-up websites on the internet. Also, radio stations have been a diminishing strategy because of the popularity of streaming services in recent years. We are making a transition to everything digital (DBK News). Record labels have recognised the rise of Tiktok and its influence on the music industry for marketing and have even forced several artists to utilise the platform, according to Borg (2022). Record labels’ often have a weakness in building their artist to a community where they may create an ‘industry plant’ artist. An industry plant is a term derived colloquially from the hip-hop genre, defined as “an artist who has a major label backing their movement but presenting them having a homegrown start-up”. This creates an illusion of an organic following for audiences to see. (Mahamba, 2021). Nevertheless, audiences can see past this as the internet shows all movements of an artist through their life. Negative connotations are attached to the word’ industry plant’ as audiences value authenticity. Having a label manipulate and artificially manufacture an artist’s rise to success does not show the artist’s personal experience, as music is mostly about life experiences. However, one weakness that Tiktok has is its large mass of users. A large percentage of creators and artists within the app causes content saturation, making it harder for new audiences to keep up and find the content they resonate with, making it harder for an artist to rise to success.

 

1. Implications for the Music Industry

 

Historically, record labels and radio stations dominated the music industry, having control of an artist’s and song’s exposure to audiences worldwide. In this new age, Tiktok’s algorithm can be placed on a pedestal because it allows any user to create a viral song regardless of whether they are signed to a record label. This creates the potential of a level playing field, giving more power for independent artists and emerging genres to rise from essentially nothing.

An implication that can occur from TikTok’s community building is that every day millions of new content being uploaded, creating a vacuum of overwhelming attention for audiences to provide, formulating the audiences to have a short attention span, craving a shorter, more simplistic song that has catchy hooks and simple melodies, shifting further away from more complex and experimental tracks. We have discussed that labels are now utilising Tiktok’s community building and are forcing artists to use Tiktok for their marketing and branding. This can disrupt the authenticity of the artist’s creativity in their music as the goal record labels are now chasing artists to create music that will perform well, trend on the platform, and become viral. This may lead to labels reducing creative songs to viral memes that are quickly forgotten, as trends do not last forever. Communities must be engaged in more than just one viral song and genuinely connect with the artist. Another implication is that since Tiktok is now heavily relied on for communities to find new music and artists, a ban on the app could affect the widespread reach to audiences for not only the independent artist but nearly every major artist (Unterberger, 2023). This is a detrimental factor as communities will have to be reached and engaged through outdated tactics, and artists cannot easily create a target audience. They would have to adapt to the traditional unreliable methods.

 

1. Conclusion

 

In conclusion, this paper presents a compelling argument for how Tiktok has revolutionized community building within the music industry. The argument is significant to the stream about communities and social media because it focuses on creating fandoms within the music community and how they are engaged with and produced with the newfound change in Tiktok’s model. Tiktok has disrupted the traditional music industry, creating communities that are grown effectively, organically, and frugally for artists, thus garnering the potential to invalidate traditional record label models of community building. The opportunities from Tiktok’s 1 billion active monthly users are endless, overcoming the limitations faced by record labels with a fluid working model helping artists capitalize on their communities at a greater length, emphasizing user-generated and authentic content.

 

“Revolutionizing Music Community Building: Tiktok’s Impact on Engaging new and old Audiences compared to Traditional Record Label Models.”Conference Paper

 

REFERENCES

 

Beveridge.(2022). What is User-Generated Content? And Why is it Important?. Hootsuite. https://blog.hootsuite.com/user-generated-content-ugc/

 

Borg. (2022). Why Are Labels Forcing Viral TikToks?. Amplify You. https://amplifyyou.amplify.link/2022/06/labels-forcing-viral-tiktoks/#:~:text=These%20artists%20include%20Charli%20XCX,song%20goes%20viral%20on%20TikTok.

 

Chiftalaryan. (2019). Challenges faced in the music industry by record labels and music managers. Linkedin. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/challenges-faced-music-industry-record-labels-karen-chiftalaryan/

 

DBK News. (n.d.). Is radio dead?. DBK News. https://dbknews.com/0999/12/31/arc-detzeclfizdtboacddq7edi25u/

 

Dever. (2022). How TikTok has changed the music industry. University of Colorado Boulder. https://www.colorado.edu/today/2022/09/12/how-tiktok-has-changed-music-industry

 

Indie Music Academy. (n.d.).TikTok Music Promotion – How It Works & Why It Matters. Indie Music Academy. https://www.indiemusicacademy.com/blog/tiktok-music-promotion-how-it-works-why-it-matters

 

Influence Digital. (n.d.). How TikTok Is Transforming The Music Industry. Influence.Digital. https://influence.digital/how-tiktok-is-transforming-the-music-industry/

 

Mahamba. (2021). Industry plants and what they mean. Bubblegumclub. https://bubblegumclub.co.za/music/industry-plants-and-what-they-mean/

 

Newberry. (2023). 2023 TikTok Algorithm Explained + Tips to Go Viral. Hootsuite. https://blog.hootsuite.com/tiktok-algorithm/#:~:text=Much%20like%20the%20Instagram%20algorithm,%2C%20or%20doesn’t%20like.

 

Peter, Riemer. (2021). Love it or hate it, TikTok is changing the music industry. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/love-it-or-hate-it-tiktok-is-changing-the-music-industry-171482

 

SMPERTH. (2022). TikTok Statistics for 2023 // Facts & Figures. Social Media Perth. https://www.smperth.com/resources/tiktok/tiktok-statistics/#:~:text=TikTok%20boasts%20approximately%20one%20billion%20active%20monthly%20users.

 

Strapagiel. (2019). How TikTok Made “Old Town Road” Become Both A Meme And A Banger. Buzzfeed News. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/laurenstrapagiel/tiktok-lil-nas-x-old-town-road

 

Unterberger. (2023). 5 Ways a TikTok Ban Might Affect the Billboard Charts. Billboard Pro. https://www.billboard.com/pro/tiktok-ban-affect-music-billboard-charts/.