we all agree that the push towards short form, vertical video (tiktok/reels/shorts) is ruining fucking everything right? Tiktok has been useful for the dissemination of political information (e.g Gaza) iâll give it that, but that feels moreso a result of meta and twitters algorithms being just a little *more*âevil and censor happy. And i want to make it very clear that my hatred for tiktok has nothing to do with the fact that it was a product of a Chinese company, because i see a lot of critiques relying on some sort of sinophobic conspiracy. On the contrary, itâs what tiktok has become in the vacuum of western popular culture and marketing that makes me fearful.
I know that every generation faces a new, polarizing technology and inevitably, there are those among said generation who will critique it. That is the nature of things. However, there is also something to be said about how, with the acceleration ïżŒof technology (running parallel to the acceleration of capitalism, acceleration towards collapse etc), each coming generation faces an increasingly more malevolent âadvancementâ. TLDR, iâm going to talk my shit.
Iâm going to speak on the aspect that is most relavent to me, as a musician. I am petrified by what short form video is doing to music and to musicians. I think that tiktok provides the illusion of making music and being a musician more âaccessibleâ while actually pouring gasoline on the fire that the pop music machine had already started. Standards for what popular culture âexpectsâ from music are being doubled and tripled. Letâs talk about song length. Success and marketability favoring shorter songs is not something new, it has been the trend for decades. But with short form video, it goes even further. Youâre not just hearing the same song over and over on the radio, youâre hearing the same 15-30 seconds of the same song over and over again. This in-turn, starts to influence the way people write music, persuading people to make songs that *could* have that 15 second appeal. There is an art to pop music, there is an art to writing a catchy hookâthis is something else. We werenât meant to hear or understand music like that. There are so many songs from reels that i found annoying, until i heard them in their full context. Itâs insidious. It makes everything feel like a fucking commercial, even if nothing is being advertised.
Iâm going to pull directly from someone elseâs experiences, someone whoâs music seems to be everywhere on short form videos. The ambient musician My Head Is Empty has a hundred million streams on the song âi was only temporaryâ. Despite that exposure, they experience ânever ending copywrite issuesâ and have âreceived death threatsâ by people who refuse to credit them when using their song. Pulling a quote here, from a comment on their own post
âvyva_melinkolya unfortunately it just gets worse. i saw a bot content page that steals pod cast footage and spams dozens of videos with my song stolen, comment on a "motivation" spam content , who actually made a post telling people the name of my song, and the previous page i mentioned, the pod cast spam commented on that video saying "Bro stop don't give out the sauce. this audio helps me pull numbers brooo" - so people are actively INTENTIONALLY stealing it and telling people to not credit me. like. u can't make this stuff upâ
Beyond this, My Head Is Empty feels frustrated that despite all this exposure, the rest of their work (nine albums) as a musician remains under appreciated, and i think that frustration is 100% valid. People cannot fully appreciate music, or even understand it as a work of art created by another human, when itâs taken so far out of its context. Again, the soul being sucked out of art by âthe machineâ isnât anything new but, this is a whole other level. Being a musician is more expensive than ever, streaming earns you fractions of a cent etc, it all feeds into itself.
When a song or a musician i love deeply finds its way on to tiktok (letâs use Dusterâs âStars Will Fallâ, one of my favorite songs ever as an example)I am not upset that i cant âgatekeepâ it anymore. Iâm not upset by the idea of something I love and hold dearly finding a larger audience. I AM upset in the manner in which it is being disseminated. Iâm upset with art I hold dear to me being chopped up and used as âtrending audioâ. When I saw Duster in concert recently, lStars Will Fallâ was the song I was most looking forward to hearing. It was the last song they played, and it was the song seemly everyone chose to talk loudly over. The audience was mostly people my age and younger. This complaint might come off as petty or pretentious or cliche, i frankly do not give a shit.
Letâs talk about how musicians are expected to promote music on tiktok/reels. This is a matter of opinion, at the risk of sounding very pretentious: the âPOV we are x band from xâ âMy label says i need x followers before xâ âposting this video until c musician notices meâ. I understand that some of it is in jest but, what the fuck? When did this become the norm? I do not blame anyone for promoting their music like this, but we should want more for ourselves. Iâve always said being a musician is deeply embarassing, inherently. If being a musician is inherently embarassing then what is this? I dont have a solution for this, and the music industry has always been ugly and bloodthirsty and seldom fruitfulâ but i feel like the very small amount of dignity we had as artists is now lost and I cant fucking stand it. Artists seem to promote the same single with dozens of reels over the course of months, hoping that something sticks. I dont want to sound like iâm shaming or, again, sound like i can provide a solution. Iâm just very fucking sorry that it seems like this is âthe wayâ. And personally, iâm scared that if i dont âget with the programâ, im going to fail.
Again, all of this speaks to larger trends in entertainment industry and even larger trends in capitalism. But iâm just airing specifics right now because frankly? I cant take it anymore.
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