It’s hard to understate the influence TikTok, the addictive short-form video app, has on pop music now. It is the natural culmination of the social media “challenges” that propelled songs like “Black Beatles” and “In My Feelings” to #1. When it works like industry players hope it works, one person will perform a silly dance to some random track, and then suddenly hundreds of thousands of people are doing the same dance to the same track, which in turn sends listeners scurrying to play the whole song on YouTube or Spotify, which may ultimately lead to more old-fashioned forms of exposure like radio airplay and TV appearances.
