Mary O'Leary analyses how social media platforms have changed the way we interact with music.
The 2020s have overwhelmingly changed the way music is consumed and promoted by the public with the rise in apps such as TikTok. Gone are the days when most people get their music recommendations from the radio or in a DVD store. Instead, many people, especially younger generations, are getting recommendations and music exposure from tiny viral snippets of songs in short video formats. Thus, making only a small portion of the chorus or song necessary for increasing its audience. Though great exposure to indie, older, and lesser-known songs, it has certainly influenced how newer musicians create their songs.
Recently the music artist Sombr, known for songs such as ‘Back to Being Friends’, did an interview with Billboard Top 100 where he explained, “Being able to A/B test things in real time is something that you’ve never been able to do [before as a musician] in history, really,. Testing it with my audience to decide what out of the 100 things to work on is the hugest blessing. And I think people should do that more.”
For those who might not know, A/B testing is when short portions of a song are released to the public to compare how an audience engages with it. In making music this way, the audience has the ability to influence songs by their favorite artist, making it an almost collaborative experience. It, however, also has a great capacity to hinder the artistic intentions of the said artist.
Unlike before, where the vast majority of musicians created music and albums that were meant to be appreciated as an entire work, A/B testing relies on the virality of incomplete pieces of work. As such, there has been a rise in criticism regarding this technique and it’s growing widespread use.
On the other hand, however, TikTok has also been an incredible resource for introducing younger generations to older, lesser-known music. ‘Let Down’ by Radiohead, released in 1997, for example, has skyrocketed into popularity among young people widely because of how prevalent it’s used on the app.
Smaller indie artists as well get more of a place to shine, with ‘The Head’ by Annabelle Dinda now with over 37 million streams on Spotify due to its first release on TikTok. Having an app which allows for artists who are unrepresented by large music companies to generate this much success is unequivocally a net positive for these smaller artists.
Just like how the introduction of videos and MTV changed how the public consumed music, apps like TikTok and Instagram are doing the very same thing. As more artists reach virality, we’ll most definitely see an increase in how A/B testing has affected the quality of modern music. That being said, we’ll also see a rise in more stars who have no relation to the music industry’s economy and production companies. Like all reinventions of music and public consumption, the industry will evolve with it. It’ll just be interesting to see what will be the thing that eventually overtakes TikTok in the fight for music distribution.