Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels
I grew up watching award shows with my mom and sister. Every year we’d gather and watch elegant celebrities walk the red carpet for the Oscars. We loved watching the drunken shenanigans of the Golden Globes, where Amy Poehler quipped, the “the beautiful people of film rub shoulders with the rat-faced people of television.” We danced to the music of the Grammys.
As time moved on and social media started taking over the entire media landscape, these awards shows began to feel more pompous and less entertaining. And then when the pandemic hit, I just lost all interest in watching these insanely wealthy celebrities dripping in jewels pat themselves on the back about how great they were. It just felt like there were so many better things to do with my time, and, really, more important things to attend to in life. Watching regular people make me laugh on social media brought me much more joy then seeing these celebs tow their PR-enforced lines.
The Grammys for me had rapidly become less and less relevant the older I got. I no longer recognized any of the artists up for the various awards.
But that all changed when TikTok came around. With TikTok so heavily reliant upon catchy music beats for influencers and joe smoes to bop around to and fill our FYPs with viral tunes, I was finding that I could recognize some of the artists and their music again.
In fact, this year’s Grammys was the first time that I actually recognized some of the Best New Artist nominees in a long time. And for Record of the Year, I actually knew Sza’s Kill Bill and Miley Cyrus’s Flowers. Me, an old, middle-aged lady knew these songs that my daughter had also listened to. I had heard of my daughter’s favorite band, boy genius. Billie Eilish’s haunting What Was I Made For was all over my FYP in the lead up to Barbie. And, of course, record-setting Album of the Year winner, Taylor Swift, has dominated my TikTok feed for months.
TikTok was the major driver of my music listening this year. It was also the way that I discovered new songs in today’s fractured media landscape. I don’t listen to the radio. When I was growing up, we had Casey Kasem counting down America’s Top 40 every week, telling us all who the new up and comers were. I don’t watch much broadcast TV. In high school and college, TV Shows like Felicity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and shows on the CW network would feature new artists that would often become national sensations.
Last week, UMG and TikTok could not reach a licensing agreement, and as a result TikTok was forced to remove UMG artists from its platform. No longer could creators find their favorite music artists in TikTok’s sound lists, and videos that used music from UMG artists were being muted.
Now, I don’t know how fairly TikTok was or was not paying UMG and how much of those payments actually go to the artists. I have read about smaller artists, like Noah Kahan, that achieved viral fame through TikTok, and they are quoted in articles saying they wonder how they are going to be impacted by these behemoths fighting with each other (let’s face it, the Taylor Swifts and Drakes of the world will be just fine without TikTok promotion). I do know that creators are endlessly creative, so I’ve seen people singing their own versions of the banned songs and otherwise moving on to other artists that are available.
I also know that, for now anyway, TikTok is where I get introduced to new music, so I’m hoping that UMG and TikTok can settle their differences if for no other reason than for me to keep up my new music cred.
Comments