After Congress passed a looming ban on TikTok in the United States, users all over the world were nervous and unsure about what would happen to their beloved platform. While many creators reassured their followers that they could still be found on sites like YouTube and Instagram, some artists worried that these alternatives wouldn’t offer the same opportunities for discovery and outreach. Though many have taken a deep sigh of relief knowing that TikTok remains functional despite its removal from app stores, its uncertain future raises an important question: How integral has TikTok become in the music industry? And what would a modern music industry look like without it?
Molly Steinman, a first-year at New York University in the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, has been in the music industry since she was seven years old. She’s been sharing cover songs on TikTok for the past few years, with her views ranging from 1,000 to 153.7k. She recently deleted TikTok, questioning whether she could maintain the same reach on Instagram, but quickly realized the platform’s limitations.
“I just deleted TikTok because it’s really bad for me, and I was wondering if I could maintain the same thing [engagement] on Instagram,” Steinman said. “But I realized that TikTok is really good at finding you a new audience and always expanding on that, putting it in front of new people. And Instagram will just put it in front of people that already follow you. It’s not going to expand your outreach.”
Steinman isn’t the only one who has noticed TikTok’s impact on engagement. Despite being a major label artist and collaborating with top-tier musicians like Julia Michaels and Gryffin & Seven Lions, Noah Kahan didn’t achieve significant commercial success until his song “Stick Season” went viral on TikTok. He initially started sharing snippets of the song on the platform in the fall of 2020.
“I had all these verses and choruses, and I put them on TikTok and crowdsourced the album in a lot of ways,” Kahan said. “I would see a positive response [and think] okay, I’m doing something good and I can keep going with it.”
When the song was ultimately released on July 8, 2022, it was a huge success. The song’s virality on TikTok played a crucial role in its success, with numerous users creating content featuring the track. Kahan reflected on the role of social media in his success.
“A lot of the success of this album is definitely born on TikTok,” Kahan said.
While TikTok has provided artists with a remarkable platform to showcase their work, its influence on the modern music industry may be stronger than some would like. Steinman notes that virality and catchiness have become central topics in both her coursework and her own creative process.
“Something we’ve been talking about a lot in my songwriting and music business classes is that the way people are making songs is so much different now,” Steinman said. “You have to write a song to get someone’s attention — either by starting with the chorus or having something people can lip sync to. There are so many fewer bridges in songs than there used to be.”
This shift is not just circumstantial. According to Berklee College of Music, TikTok’s emphasis on short-form content has fundamentally altered song structures, with many now tailoring their music to fit the platform’s fast-paced, trend-driven environment. Miami University student Josie Zimmerman commented on this new trend.
“In a pre-TikTok world, most popular songs would be structured verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus,” Zimmerman said. “But on TikTok, it’s chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus, and then repeat.”
Beyond just influencing composition, TikTok has also transformed what it means to actually be an artist. In today’s industry it is expected of musicians to be full-time content creators, constantly producing short-form videos to maintain their media standing. For those signed to record labels, social media engagement is now a key part of promotion — whether they like it or not.
“Signing onto a record label comes with marketing and promotion, so now that TikTok is basically an essential part of advertisement, artists who don’t want to make eight shorts a week aren’t given a lot of options,” Zimmerman said.
For Steinman, especially as a college student with seemingly endless workload and responsibilities, this dynamic creates a difficult balance between being a creator and a consumer.
“Yeah, it’s really hard to separate the creator me versus me as a consumer because, like, the app is so addicting,” Steinman said. “The plus side is, if you’re on it all the time, you know what’s trending and what you should make to connect with other people. But then the downside is, you’re spending so much wasted time on the app.”
What was once a platform for casual creativity has now become an essential marketing tool, one that dictates not just how music is promoted, but how it’s created. With TikTok’s future in question, the music industry may be forced to reckon with just how much control the platform has over its success. If the app were to (actually) disappear tomorrow, would artists and labels be able to maintain the same level of discovery and growth? Or has TikTok already redefined the industry, so much so that there’s no going back?
