ARTS
2.5 and has now been streamed over song ‘Driver’s Licence’ began as a 25 second clip Olivia Rodrigo’s
them the power to diversify into TikTok and harness it as a great advertising tool. But from the perspective of a purist, TikTok currently overshadows the music industry and will continue to for years to come; intensifying the gap between the top 3 record labels and independent artists and labels by increasing their leverage and hold over data. As these 3 labels drive the narrative for the music industry, creating lower quality and less meaningful music, it forces other artists to follow suit due to demand. For example, in 2000 the top 100 billboard average song duration was 4 minutes long, with no songs being under 2 and a half minutes. Now the top 100 billboard average song duration is 3 minutes and 30 seconds with more than 10% of the songs being under 2 and a half minutes. JME said ‘artists now just share their hard drives’.... ‘it’s lost its meaning you used to feel something’....’just hoping your music is used for a meme or a background song for TikTok’.
billion times
Combined, this oligopoly holds immense powers of leverage and negotiation with streaming services for licensing contracts and playlist curation. This again puts independent labels and artists at a significant disadvantage. However, many independent artists can only acknowledge and accept this fact, ever hopeful to hit the jackpot and experience a similar TikTok success story to Olivia Rodrigo. From the financial perspective of Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, TikTok grants
“If a song is going viral on TikTok labels are scrambling to sign that song or that artist.” TATIANA CRISANO
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