Tik Tok Takes Toll on Live Music Industry
After two chaotic years, live music is back, but it’s different.
It was just a month ago that pop sensation Taylor Swift’s upcoming “The Eras Tour” nearly broke ticket sales company Ticketmaster. According to the company’s blog, their site reported a record number of 3.5 billion people who tried to get tickets to Swift’s tour, frustrating fans. With a number like that, it is easy to forget that just two years ago there was no live music.
A little over a month before the Swift fiasco, Vulture reported that “The Live Music Industry is Broken”. There is no doubt that it has changed since the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic but there may be a lot more to it than the story lets on. There is one new factor that cannot be ignored in the music industry, especially in live music: Tik Tok.
“While I’m grateful to TikTok for giving artists a larger platform, the concert experience has been wrecked by people who go to shows for the one or two songs that have blown up on TikTok.” — Anonymous Survey Respondent
Anna McCabe, a senior at Montclair State University, is a Tik Tok user and an avid music listener. In the last two years, her music taste has made quite the journey.
“I definitely listen to a much more soft indie route. I used to listen to really hardcore rap in high school. I would definitely say that over quarantine I broadened my horizons a little more,” McCabe said. “A lot of it is from Tik Tok.”
McCabe is not alone in this. In a recent survey, 46% of 69 respondents said they use Tik Tok to find new music. Industry analyst Tatiana Cirisano told NPR that consumer data she had collected showed that “TikTok users are more likely to spend money on music, and be more invested in it.” But as Tik Tok merits billions of users worldwide, this means that artists have a much larger reach and fanbase. Which may not be as great as it sounds, especially for the fans.
One 21-year-old anonymous survey respondent showed some displeasure with the current climate at the concerts they’ve attended.
“While I’m grateful to TikTok for giving artists a larger platform, the concert experience has been wrecked by people who go to shows for the one or two songs that have blown up on TikTok,” the respondent said. “They are disrespectful through the whole set, then scream/use [their] phones excessively during the Tik Tok famous songs. [This] has happened at almost every concert I’ve attended since Tik Tok has become big in recent years.
Another 19-year-old respondent echoed this frustration, particularly with ticket sales.
“I don’t want my [favorite] artist on Tik Tok cause then fake fans will buy all the tickets,” the respondent said.
This was a day after the Swift/Ticketmaster debacle.
Dan Toth is the lead singer of his cover band Audio Riot. He is also a Ph.D. student at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. In his studies and through personal observation, Toth has seen the drastic changes firsthand in the live music industry.
“Tik Tok is now the driving force of what our audience is expecting at a show,” Toth said. “So when we come to a show and we do a song that’s three minutes long, we can notice that half of the time we’re losing the interest of that crowd, probably about a minute and a half in.”
Toth thinks that COVID-19 played a huge part in this shift.
“I personally believe that the pandemic upped that process of allowing social media to become the main driver of new music and just obviously general engagement,” Toth said. “It was happening anyway for sure, [but] a lot slower.”
Toth does admit that this has led to many positives for performers and artists but he also believes there is still a lot more to do.
“When you’re scrolling through Tik Tok there’s a lot more opportunity to just bypass somebody, it’s less personal, there’s less invested in it,” Toth said. “Although both Tik Tok and live music provide a lot of opportunity and platform for artists, I think that they [both provide something] different and [we] need to figure out how to marry the two.”
Emma Caughlan is a senior a Montclair State University. She is a multifaceted storyteller with a particular passion for writing. She has experience with collaboration and leadership as the Editor-In-Chief of her university’s independent student-run newspaper and as an anchor for the weekly news production show.
