How TikTok Is Changing Marketing in the Music Industry and Beyond - The New York Times
In a TikTok post last month, the singer Halsey shared a message with fans: “basically i have a song that i love that i want to release ASAP,” the musician wrote, “but my record label won’t let me.” Despite eight years in the music industry and over 165 million records sold, Halsey said, “my record company is saying that i can’t release it unless they can fake a viral moment on tiktok.”
Several other artists had recently expressed similar frustrations with labels forever chasing the next “Old Town Road” or “Drivers License” — singles that took off on TikTok and climbed the Billboard charts. “All record labels ask for are TikToks,” FKA twigs wrote in a since-deleted post on the platform. Florence Welch, Doja Cat and Charli XCX have also referred to their labels’ TikTok fixations. (A little over a week after Halsey published the TikTok video, which became its own “viral moment,” Capitol Records announced in a Twitter post addressing the artist that it was “committing to a release of ‘So Good’” on June 9. “We are an artist-first company that encourages open dialogue,” the label said in a statement. “We have nothing but a desire to help each one of our artists succeed, and hope that we can continue to have these critical conversations.”)
Complaints from recording artists about promotional demands are as old as the music industry itself, and they have often played out in public feuds. But these recent grievances aren’t targeted at the labels themselves. They are direct appeals to fans (in Halsey’s case, 4.6 million of them on TikTok). And while they describe highly specific scenarios — world-famous artists in disputes with their labels over marketing strategies — they also evoke an experience familiar to just about anyone with a presence on social media, where aspects of the experience of fame have been formalized and made available to everyone.
