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РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS
Culture THE POWER
OF TIKTOK
How the popular app gave
these musicians a career boost
It seems inevitable that TikTok will tions. While popular songs have birthed
soon be part of this battle. As the com- memes—as in the case of Soulja Boy’s
pany has grown, with ByteDance being “Pretty Boy Swag” or Metro Station’s
called the world’s most valuable startup, “Shake It”—memes have also turned
TikTok has increasingly found itself in minor songs into omnipresent smashes.
the spotlight, and not always in Ava Max, a 25-year-old singer-
ways it might like. It faced al- songwriter in Los Angeles, is
legations about its handling SUPA proof of the latter. Her song
of user data as well as ques- DUPA HUMBLE “Not Your Barbie Girl” flew
tions about what type of con- Saw monthly under the radar for about six
tent it will allow on its plat- YouTube months before it picked up
form. In the case of the artists views double steam on TikTok. Suddenly
who have seen their songs take women were singing along to
off in ways they never expected, her lyrics while either dressing up
the question is whether giving them a as Barbie or flouting the strict confines
platform is enough. Given the amount of the doll’s image. “I noticed that and
of money at stake, how long will expo- freaked out,” Max says. Several months
sure be sufficient as currency? later, her song “Sweet but Psycho” ex-
ploded to an even greater degree on the
When you open TikTok, it looks a bit app, which helped the song accrue more
like Instagram: you scroll down a verti- than 550 million streams on Spotify. “It
cal feed of videos that you can like, com- helped because it reached a wider audi- BuT noT all TikTok sTars have seen
ment on or share. But unlike Instagram ence and a younger generation that are the same success outside the app. Songs
and Facebook, in which you choose to mostly on their phone, as I am,” she says. are often posted on the platform without
follow friends or organizations, Tik- TikTok’s greatest success story is in- being labeled correctly, and it can take
Tok gives you content based solely on disputably Lil Nas X. The 20-year-old weeks or even months for musicians to
an algorithm powered by artificial in- Atlanta artist was a college dropout get proper credit.
telligence, often displaying the most sleeping on his sister’s floor when, play- Such is the case for ZaeHD & CEO,
viral and fun videos that have recently ing off the renewed popularity of cow- two rappers out of Little Rock, Ark.
emerged on the platform. boy culture online, he started promoting Like Lil Nas X, they hoped to engineer
TikTok, of course, did not invent the his country-trap song “Old Town Road” viral success by recording songs specifi-
lip-sync comedy that’s so popular with through memes on Twitter and Insta- cally designed to be consumed as bite-
its users—Jerry Lewis mimed a big band gram. After several months, it broke out size memes. Weeks before they released
in 1961, and Wayne and Garth of Wayne’s on TikTok, with creators using it in their the full version of their song “All In,”
World headbanged to “Bohemian Rhap- videos as they transformed them- they posted short videos of them-
sody” three decades later. It also isn’t in- selves into cowboys and cowgirls. selves and others dancing to snip-
AVA
troducing participatory memes to the Record labels took notice, MAX pets on Instagram, making it
world—think the EDM craze “Harlem and after a fierce bidding war, a minor sensation before it
Shake.” But perhaps never before has Lil Nas X signed with Colum- Soundtracked was even out.
such a large platform made it so simple bia Records in March. When two viral Their social-media push
memes
to both consume and take part in these Billboard removed the song worked: a portion of the song @DESMONDPHOTAGRAPHY (2); COURTESY RICH MORGAN; THESE PAGES: HUMBLE: TOMMY T; MA X, NAS X, JOJI: GET T Y IMAGES; Z AEHD & CEO: @DESMONDPHOTAGRAPHY PREVIOUS PAGES: FROM LEF T, THEN TOP TO BOT TOM: GET T Y IMAGES; COURTESY RICH MORGAN; GET T Y IMAGES; GET T Y IMAGES; JASON GOODRICH; COURTESY RICH MORGAN;
art forms. TikTok has a huge database from its country charts later that has been featured in 2.3 mil- @DOMINICTOLIVER, GET T Y IMAGES; @STAURENGL AGGIE; GET T Y IMAGES; @FLUFF YFACE _ENZO; COURTESY RICH MORGAN, GET T Y IMAGES; @DOBRET WINS; @ASH_L AY;
of songs; if you see a song you like in a month— classifying it as hip-hop as op- lion videos on TikTok. But there’s one
video, you can click on it and use it right posed to country—it got even more at- issue: that sample was put into TikTok’s
away. The ability to easily find an audi- tention amid the controversy. The song system by another user, who labeled it
ence, combined with the platform’s lack has become inescapable, and a remix fea- “Em Em Dance,” by Keezy. The hashtag
of pretension, has made TikTok highly turing Billy Ray Cyrus sits at No. 1 on the #ememdance has now been viewed over
addictive for a younger generation. Billboard Hot 100. 32 million times with no reference to the
And as the app has grown, it’s become “I should maybe be paying TikTok,” Lil song’s creators. “I have been looking for
clear that virality can run in two direc- Nas X says. “They really boosted the song.” this song for the longest [time] I kept typ-
ing in mmm mmm mmm but nothing rec-
ognized it,” one YouTube comment reads.
Sleuthing fans like that one did
I SHOULD MAYBE BE find the song on other platforms, like
PAYING TIKTOK. THEY REALLY Spotify and YouTube, which pay artists
per stream. But as of publication time,
BOOSTED THE SONG. —LIL NAS X the song is still labeled incorrectly—
despite the fact that ZaeHD says his
78 tIme June 3–10, 2019
