The Changes in the Cultural and Social Meaning of Music: The Case of TikTok

Abstract

The music industry is facing radical changes due to the spread of new phenomena and trends, such as TikTok, a social media platform whose popularity starting to increase from 2019. It has a significant and consistent relationship with music as sounds are its main language: it offers the opportunity to upload visual content to which a sound is always complementary. Its impact can be noticed by looking at quantitative data and cases that demonstrated its relevancy within the music sector: for instance, it pushed the career of many artists as well as the popularity of many songs. Those examples opened up the research question that aims at detecting whether TikTok is having a deeper impact on the music industry, especially on the way individuals are valuing the social and cultural meaning of music. Therefore, the research project is structured so to provide knowledge about the current literature on music and its value, and to enrich it with further insights thanks to the development of a qualitative research on a sample of 9 people that represents the artistic and the production/distribution side of the music industry. The aim is to outline how TikTok is causing several changes in the music industry, being a digital, democratic and worldwide social media platform: it is affecting, in particular, three processes - the discovery, listening and making of music - leading to changes when it comes to the way the social and cultural meaning of music is defined. Music is one of the most relevant forms of art; it shapes and it is shaped by the society and culture in which it is consumed and produced. Also, it has always been affected by improvements caused, in particular, by digitalization. TikTok is making music more accessible both in consumption and production while enhancing the risk of going towards an homogenization of sounds, content and culture. Therefore, its impact has to be analyzed in order to outline the direction towards which the music sector is going and which are the challenges it has to face in the future.