Post by MikeMusic on Oct 6, 2022 19:36:28 GMT
Record Labels Dig Their Own Grave. And the Shovel is Called TikTok
"It’s not just the music biz—legacy media outlets everywhere are playing the same dangerous game.
With each passing month, record labels grow more attached to TikTok—but it now looks more like addiction. Some have reached the point where they won’t release an album until the music goes viral on TikTok.
Consider the strange case of Trevor Daniel, who had more than one billion streams for his breakout hit “Falling.” The song climbed the chart in more than 20 countries. But now his label requires TikTok success before releasing a new record.
“It’s just been pretty much impossible to put out music,” he recently told Rolling Stone.
That’s dumbfounding.
A 27-year-old with a billion streams can’t release new music? But he isn’t exaggerating. He keeps uploading snippets, waiting for one to go viral—but they don’t reach the threshold his label demands.
This is hardly an isolated case. The singer Halsey put up a TikTok last week complaining about her label’s obsession with TikTok. “I have a song I love I wanna release ASAP,” she told fans on the platform, “but my record label won’t let me. I’ve been in this industry for eight years and I’ve sold over 165 million records, and my record company is saying that I can’t release it unless they can fake a viral moment on TikTok.”
The story gets weirder. This public shaming of her label did go viral on TikTok, and that was sufficient for the label to agree to issue the song. There’s some heavy metanarrative baggage there for us to unpack. In order to conquer your label’s TikTok addiction you need to use… TikTok.
even more on link
"It’s not just the music biz—legacy media outlets everywhere are playing the same dangerous game.
With each passing month, record labels grow more attached to TikTok—but it now looks more like addiction. Some have reached the point where they won’t release an album until the music goes viral on TikTok.
Consider the strange case of Trevor Daniel, who had more than one billion streams for his breakout hit “Falling.” The song climbed the chart in more than 20 countries. But now his label requires TikTok success before releasing a new record.
“It’s just been pretty much impossible to put out music,” he recently told Rolling Stone.
That’s dumbfounding.
A 27-year-old with a billion streams can’t release new music? But he isn’t exaggerating. He keeps uploading snippets, waiting for one to go viral—but they don’t reach the threshold his label demands.
This is hardly an isolated case. The singer Halsey put up a TikTok last week complaining about her label’s obsession with TikTok. “I have a song I love I wanna release ASAP,” she told fans on the platform, “but my record label won’t let me. I’ve been in this industry for eight years and I’ve sold over 165 million records, and my record company is saying that I can’t release it unless they can fake a viral moment on TikTok.”
The story gets weirder. This public shaming of her label did go viral on TikTok, and that was sufficient for the label to agree to issue the song. There’s some heavy metanarrative baggage there for us to unpack. In order to conquer your label’s TikTok addiction you need to use… TikTok.
even more on link