TikTok: The New Cataylist for Music Careers

Written by Micaela Miller

While TikTok seems to have served as a launchpad for many influencer’s music careers, the app seems to be struggling with keeping them sustainable. 

With Instagram seemingly dying off due to an increasing lack of interest in aesthetically-curated photos, the addictive seemingly endless scroll of TikTok has presented an attractive lure to social media users of today. With a surprising 1 billion active daily users worldwide as of September 2021, there is no arguing the popularity of the app that has managed to appeal to the short attention spans of everyone and the thrall of never knowing what’s coming up in your feed. The black hole of content is satisfying, and with your feed consisting mainly of people you don’t follow, on the creator side it’s much easier to get discovered and or go viral. 

TikTok’s addictive algorithm has inspired other social media platforms to follow suit; in particular, META which owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, among other products and services. Even Spotify has taken some cues from TikTok, announcing in March of 2023 that they’re going to be redesigning their homepage to mimic TikTok’s vertical feed, but with music and podcast recommendations. 

“It's wild watching tech companies tear their user interfaces and business models apart trying to compete with TikTok because they can't do the one thing that makes TikTok work which is the AI that powers it,” tech writer Ryan Broderick tweeted after Spotify’s announcement…” (Forbes).

The app has quickly become the host organism to every current mainstream influencer in popular culture, most of whom owe the peaks and valleys of their career to the app. From Charli D’Amelio (whose whole family has now become Gen Z’s Kardashians) to Addison Rae, and from Bella Poarch to Chase Hudson, these influencers have had a quick rise to fame (mostly through the pandemic), and for the most part have managed to stay relevant, despite the initial allegations that TikTok could only produce a fifteen-minutes level of fame. What they have also all managed is the launching of their music careers. 

Many influencers who find themselves shot into the spotlight on TikTok have taken advantage of the seemingly endless opportunities given to influencers to try and milk their fame. Even influencers who had found some acclaim before the launch of TikTok have used the app as an almost cultural refresher to stay relevant and to boost their careers, i.e. Loren Gray and Jason Deurelo. 

And it’s worked. These influencers have had “music careers” that are already infinitely more successful than most people who try and build those types of careers from the ground up. Charli D’Amelio got the opportunity to release a song and music video (though it seems she has changed her mind about pursuing the industry); Dixie D’Amelio is actively putting out music and has had performance opportunities many new opportunities would kill for (performing at Jingle Ball in 2021), and Leah Kate (who many online have deemed an “industry plant”) got to open for Chase Alantic’s North American tour in 2022. 

However, it seems that as quickly as these influencers launched to music fame the hype surrounding them died down. Charli D’Amelio’s music is never brought up when she’s referenced in pop culture; Dixie D’Amelio has less than 600,000 monthly listeners on Spotify despite having 56.9 million on TikTok, and you just never really hear about Leah Kate - although she did just release a full-length album last month.