The TikTok Phenomenon
Adapted from Epilogue: 2020 - Into the Future
TikTok was introduced in August 2018 as an adaptation of the already-existing Musical.ly app, which featured fifteen-second videos created by users lip-syncing and/or dancing to existing music tracks. Chinese tech innovator and Tencent rival ByteDance had purchased Musical.ly for close to $1 billion in 2017, shut it down, and incorporated its technology into its already-operating China-based app Douyin, and the newly created TikTok for the rest of the world. Like other social media platforms, TikTok employed proprietary algorithms to mine and monetize the data related to its users’ tastes and preferences.
As TikTok gained traction and then national attention in 2019 with the viral-propelled success of Old Town Road, there were politically generated accusations of TikTok supplying consumer information to China. ByteDance insisted that TikTok’s servers operated independently, were located in the US and Singapore, and had no exchange of consumer data with ByteDance. Nonetheless the Trump administration tried to force a sale of TikTok’s US division to a domestic owner or force it to shut down. Bobby Allyn of NPR.org reported that on December 7, 2020, DC District Judge Carl Nichols “was the second judge to rule against the president’s ban....Despite talks aimed at safeguarding U.S. user data being hashed out in a separate process, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross continued to push for TikTok to be blacklisted in the U.S.” Allyn then cited Judge Nichols’s ruling, stating that “the Secretary did not consider any alternatives before effectively banning TikTok from the United States, nor did the Secretary articulate any justification (rational or otherwise) for failing to consider any such alternatives.”1
In 2020 the approximately 68 million US Gen Z’ers ranged in age from eight to twenty-three. They were the first age group to have access to smartphones before entering their teens. Along with the younger millennials, they were the top targets for marketing new acts. Terry Collins’ April 2021 USA Today analysis of a Pew Research survey on the COVID-19-related differences in digital consumption trends between different age groupings asked, Have Social Platforms Reached Their Peak? Collins observed, “The striking shortform viral videos and images of Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok continue to climb in popularity with Gen Z.”2
Collins also cited University of Buffalo associate communication professor Helen Wang, in describing Gen Z’s affinity for these more interactive platforms. “They grew up immersed in rich media and they are naturally equipped with better digital media literacy skills to navigate across different platforms competently and nimbly....So even though they might have started on these social media for fun, these social media channels can also be part of their digital toolbox and help with other purposes when needed.”3
The skills described by Professor Wang became a major factor in TikTok’s meteoric rise to reach $1.9 billion in revenue in 2020, a 457 percent increase over 2019’s $350 million. According to research conducted by Rebecca Bellan for Forbes, TikTok led all social media apps with 82 million downloads to new users’ smartphones in 2020. As described by Bellan, “The app makes it easy to create or binge-watch micro-entertainment, short vids dripping with pep and Moxy and serving up Gen Z realness. Videos often take the form of challenges that run the gamut of dance challenges....to multi-generational explorations of music. Tutorials and life hacks also tend to go viral, and users often joke that they learn more from TikTok than they do from school.”4 Trailing TikTok in new user accounts were Instagram with 57.5 million downloaded apps, Snapchat at 43 million, Facebook with 42 million, and Twitter at 25 million.
After millions of selfies and countless home videos taken with their smartphone cameras over the past dozen years, Millennials and Gen Z’ers easily mastered the editing and production apps that accompanied TikTok’s launch.
Millions of them, along with the more digitally dexterous of the older age groupings, flocked to this participatory form of music consumption. TikTok clips still had the fifteen-second time limit that it had inherited from Musical.ly, but allowed up to four to be uploaded in tandem as a unified production with a one-minute limit, which was then extended to three minutes at the end of 2020.
The record labels, however, had their own set of tech-savvy millennials who recognized TikTok’s marketing potential. They sponsored competitive dance contests created by a suddenly popular cadre of TikTok influencers who challenged consumers to create and post their own video versions. Also popular was TikTok’s Duet function, which allowed users “….to build on another user’s video on TikTok by recording your own video alongside the original as it plays. It’s a creative format for interacting with others’ videos, building on existing stories, and creating new and unique content in collaboration with creators across the platform.”5
Billboard deputy editor Andrew Unterberger queried “Can TikTok Rival MTV’s Heyday For Gen-Z?” in a December 2020 column, suggesting that when music fans of the 1980s recall the top hits of the era such as Men at Work’s Down Under, The Police’s Every Breath You Take, or Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean they “almost certainly recall images of each song’s music video, made unavoidable through heavy airplay on MTV. If you’re a teenage music fan doing the same with 2020 No. 1s (Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé’s Savage, Doja Cat and Nicki Minaj’s Say So. 24kGoldn and iann dior’s Mood), you’d probably remember similar images. But rather than the artists’ own videos, they’d be of viral dance challenges born on TikTok.”6
Corey Sheridan, TikTok’s head of music partnerships and content operations, told Unterberger that while MTV had the market to itself for a dozen years with no real competition, “TikTok has competition, will have competition, and its competition doesn’t just come from its competitors, but from whatever we can’t forecast that will be the new TikTok....I hope a few years from now we can look back and say, ‘This is the TikTok generation”.7
Footnotes:
1. Bobby Allyn, “U.S. Judge Halts Trump’s TikTok Ban, the 2nd Court to Fully Block the Action,” npr.org, December 7, 2020, U.S. Judge Halts Trump's TikTok Ban, The 2nd Court To Fully Block The Action : NPR.
2. Terry Collins, “Have Social Platforms Reached Their Peak? Pew Research Survey Shows Little User Growth Since Last Year,” USA Today, April 7, 2021, Pew survey: Gen Z gravitates to Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok (usatoday.com).
3. Collins, “Have Social Platforms Reached Their Peak”
4. Rebecca Bellan, “The Top Social Media Apps of 2020, According to Apptopia,” Forbes, December 3, 2020, The Top Social Media Apps Of 2020, According To Apptopia (forbes.com)
5. “Feature Highlight: New Layouts for Duet,” September 30, 2020, Feature highlight: new layouts for Duet | TikTok Newsroom.
6. Andrew Unterberger, “Can TikTok Rival MTV’s Heyday For Gen-Z?” Billboard, December 21, 2020, TikTok's Music Industry Impact: Is It the New MTV? – Billboard.
7. Unterberger, “Can TikTok Rival MTV’s Heyday For Gen-Z?”