Dirt is a daily email about entertainment.
Tobias Hess on musicians joining TikTok against their will (allegedly).
In a mind-bendingly meta development, musicians are speaking up about the pressure they’re facing from their labels to post more TikToks, on TikTok. And it’s leading to noticeably high engagement.
For example, Florence Welch of “Florence + The Machine,” recently struck TikTok gold when she posted a video of her singing a capella with the caption "my label is begging me for 'lo fi' TikToks so here you go. pls send help." Similarly, Maggie Rogers has also found success with a TikTok that depicts her drunkenly sauntering in a bar bathroom behind text that vents about her label’s demands for content.
There is probably an element of truth in these frustrated admissions, but ultimately these videos are highly optimized for TikTok. The complaints provide an impetus for viewers to comment messages of support, which helps boost the video in TikTok's engagement-sensitive algorithm. And they give viewers a sense of parasocial kinship as they are made to feel like their favorite musicians are being transparent about the corporate pressures they are contending with.
These TikToks’ chief function though, may be as a protective shield for cringe-weary musicians. Certain artists likely feel embarrassed about posting on an app geared towards the younger end of Gen Z, or find their need to be influencers in addition to artists, silly. So if they have to post, why not do so with a self-aware wink?
It helps that a self-conscious affect vibes well with TikTok’s casual culture, which formed in large part as a reaction against Instagram’s encouragement to perform #blessed perfection. And at the end of the day, they are fulfilling their label’s desires, because if labels are demanding TikTok success, complaining about those very same demands on TikTok seems to lead to exactly that. — Tobias Hess