From Halsey to Ed Sheeran, musicians are speaking out against their labels for pressuring them to fake viral moments on TikTok.
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00:00They wanted me to do a six TikTok campaign over the course of a month where we slowly and organically make the record
00:08Go viral. I don't know how to do that
00:12I don't want to be on tiktok, but my label told me that I have to
00:17They're literally blocking me from being able to release a song and there's nothing that I can do about it
00:29Nothing, but I didn't really want to be here. So I was made to be here. So
00:34Obviously i'm just like wanting to get disabled
00:36There's an enormous amount of pressure on artists today to essentially be full-time content creators in addition to everything else that's on their plate
00:47So
00:53That worked great when
00:54You know in the traditional marketing methods of billboards or targeted ads things that the artist doesn't have to be there for
01:02Now that social media is essentially equated with marketing the artist needs to be involved
01:07Not me drunk at 2 a.m in the east village remembering someone is gonna yell at me in the morning to post on tiktok
01:14Make that shit go viral and then maybe we'll support it
01:19If you do a job for us, then you might be rewarded
01:23I think that uh artists especially those that are signed are frustrated that they feel like why am I doing my label's job?
01:29I was always able to write my way out
01:34Song always made sense to me
01:37Usually a superstar is a superstar, but in how competitive it is these days. Um
01:42It's just it's hard even if you even if you are healthy
01:58There's so many different ways to get people to listen to your music and tiktok is so fucking huge
02:03I love it like everything like no, it's great
02:06And you have people like check out my new song and it goes fucking viral and that changes people's lives
02:12And you know, you discover talented people on there and everything, you know, but it's just so hard for me
02:19to
02:20Make something natural tiktok has really changed the music marketing game
02:25Um essentially for two main reasons
02:28Um, which are one it allows users to actually interact with the music that their fans have and use it to express themselves
02:35Um, which is something that I can't think of another like mainstream social media app
02:39That's really done that before to that degree and I think two
02:42It's focused on discovery
02:44which is a huge difference between tiktok and the social media apps that came before it and discovery is the thing that
02:49Everyone in music needs the most these days when my label tells me I gotta make two tiktoks a day
02:57Whereas the music industry used to be sort of
03:00Hand selecting the artists and songs that they want to be hits
03:03These days the music industry is a lot more reactionary and reacting to what people are kind of raising their hands for
03:18Conversation tiktok came up a lot, right?
03:21So i'm like ticker tocker who like they're like, you know
03:23We really gotta make sure these 14 year olds know who you are and i'm like, but they've all got mums
03:27They've all got mums and they've definitely been growing up listening to my music
03:30I think that there is a pressure these days for artists to almost be
03:35you know social media personalities, um and make these these interesting videos and
03:41Do all of these things that didn't used to be
03:44you know in the
03:46in the toolbox
03:53There is a misconception about
03:55Tiktok and content in general that it's just easy to create not every artist is going to
04:00Feel comfortable on that platform or the format's not going to work for them
04:04One thing about tiktok is we all want to be here and I feel like as gen z-ers
04:08They have this powerful like bullsh detector can right away
04:11Tell if something is being manufactured by a label or is like truly authentic
04:15It's not the fault of the labels or the artists or tiktok
04:17Um, I think it all kind of goes back to how competitive the landscape is right now. I just hate this. Oh, I know
04:23I hate it. It sucks