Labels and artists are forced to rethink marketing strategies - as TikTok, a stapled music industry and viral hit-making app - faces possible US shutdown.
Currently, TikTok access has been extended to a 75-day US presidential period to compliment US lawmakers' demands and deadline of January 19th 2025. TikTok shut down early on January 18th but restored mobile access afterwards (for non-uninstalled accounts) upon communication with inaugurated President Trump.
Since its debut in 2017, TikTok has become a star-making machine, as short-form video content has eclipsed traditional forms of music promotion such as TV and radio. The app has the power to make rising artists into A-listers and propel their ascent to the top of the charts.
With the help of TikTok, Lil Nas X turned the $30 beat of “Old Town Road” into a career-making smash, while dance challenges drove Doja Cat’s Say So and Megan Thee Stallion’s Savage to No. 1 in the US.
The ability to track a song’s stickiness, engagement and reach is something like a label executive’s dream, offering what the author John Seabrook has called “real-time global callout data”, which in turn helps bigwigs make smart deals. “Most label strategies rely heavily on TikTok now,” says Ray Uscata, managing director of North and South America at the music marketing agency Round. “It’s not just an entertainment platform; it’s a discovery platform. People go into Instagram to see what their friends are doing, or YouTube to see what their favorite creators are up to – but they go to TikTok to see something new.”
Artists and record labels see TikTok as the closest thing that the fragmented mainstream music industry has to a kingmaker today, making it tough to imagine a future without it. “If you look at the global top 50 [chart] on Spotify, compared to the viral charts, most of these songs are charting or trending on TikTok at the moment,” says Uscata. “None of these are really coming from any other platform.”
In April 2024, the US Congress passed a law that forces TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app to a US-based owner or face a total shutdown, citing national security concerns of potential manipulation of TikTok by the Chinese government and its collection of sensitive user data, which then President Joe Biden signed.
On January 10th 2025, the US Supreme Court convened to decide whether to force TikTok to go dark in the US on January 19. Despite widespread outcry from creators (and the ACLU slamming the proposal as unconstitutional), on January 17 the court upheld the law that threatens to make the app disappear in the US.
On January 20th 2025, re-elected President Trump executively ordered a 75 day grace period to bring various US entities together; to impose a sale / sell portion of TikTok's ownership to an American entity(s) to continue operating in America. This is called and considered as "qualified divestiture".
TikTok's U.S. users are not targeted by the ban, which President Trump has paused until early April 2025.
But the law, Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, would make it illegal for app stores from Google or Apple, as well as web-hosting services, to distribute or service TikTok.
According to CBS News, some of TikTok's 170 million U.S.-based users are selling phones with the social media app preloaded on them for thousands of dollars online. > https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tiktok-loaded-phones-are-selling-for-thousands-online/
Experts have long cautioned against funneling what Uscata estimates is 80-90% of a typical marketing budget into an app which could easily go the same way as the once-vibrant, now-defunct Vine. “We’ve seen this movie before,” says Johnny Cloherty, founder of marketing agency Genni, referencing the UMG dispute.
Others were philosophical about the possibilities of a TikTok-free future. “Hopefully artists and labels have been focusing on direct-to-fan communications,” said Jonathan Janis, a music marketing executive in New York. “Take the algorithm out of the equation.”
There could even be a silver lining to all this, says Joe Aboud. As the founder of management and marketing company 444 Sounds, he often works with artists whose creative ambitions don’t line up with the brevity and punchiness prized by TikTok’s algorithm. “I think it could spark a creative renaissance in the industry,” he says. “Artists are feeling a lot of pressure to go viral, and it’s shifting the way that they’re making music. In some ways, having TikTok not be the ruler of the modern marketplace may allow true creatives to feel a little bit less constricted.”
● SOURCE: ‘A lot of chaos, quickly’: panic grips US music industry as ‘kingmaker’ TikTok faces ban. The Guardian > https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/18/us-tiktok-ban-music-industry
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