Is TikTok Ruining Music?
INDIO, CALIFORNIA – APRIL 23: Singer Steve Lacy performs on the Mojave Stage during Weekend 2, Day 2 of the 2022 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on April 23, 2022 in Indio, California. (Photo by Scott Dudelson/Getty Images for Coachella)
November 16, 2022
Seems Lacy is getting a little fed up at some fans at his shows, new or not.
New artists blow up into the mainstream everyday. TikTok is one of the main contributors to that. An example of this happening is Steve Lacy becoming more mainstream due to his single, “Bad Habit” and his album “Gemini Rights.” Short bits of the Lacy’s songs became trends on TikTok which resulted in people streaming his music.
TikTok drives a lot of attention to the artist and creates a new type of fans that people that were fans before the artist blew up tend not to like. These new fans tend to buy tickets to the artist’s tour when they only really know the chorus to a few of the songs and are quiet the rest of the show leading to a dead crowd most of the show.
People on TikTok really like sped up songs, some people don’t like it, but the majority do. Some even like the sped up version more than the normal speed songs. Artists even start releasing multiple versions of their song, one normal and one sped up if it blows up on TikTok. Another example of that, also from Steve Lacy, is him releasing a sped up version of “Bad Habit” due to the song on TikTok having more views for the sped up than the normal version.
On the “Bad Habit” tour tickets sold out in seconds due to Lacy choosing small venues. The demand drove the ticket price to skyrocket more than 10 times the original price from $35 a ticket to now up to around $1,000 because of the high demand from resellers. Now his core fans struggle to get their hands on a ticket, while the new fans were willing to pay all that money to hear a few songs.
At one venue in New Orleans fans were repeatedly throwing stuff on stage at Lacy, and after a while someone threw a disposable camera at him for him to take a picture with it. Instead, he stopped playing, took the camera and smashed it on the ground, then walked off stage ending the show early. In another incident a girl was recording a video in between songs and screamed from the silence, “Can you say hi to my mom,” to which Lacy replied, “Can you be quiet,” and started playing the next song. Seems Lacy is getting a little fed up at some fans at his shows, new or not.
Overall TikTok may not be ruining music, but may be tarnishing tours and changing the way that music will probably be released in the future with two different versions, one normal version and the other a TikTok version.
brady • Nov 22, 2022 at 8:15 am
i think that tiktok has very much helped music with how it helps people observe many different kinds of music even if its not a type of genre that they would normally listen to