The most surefire way to get a hit today is through online virality. Gone are the days of radio discerning whether or not they’ll blast a song at you every hour. Instead, the song has to pull that trick on your social media algorithms.
You love this song, right? Here it is on every post on TikTok, X, and Instagram. TikTok especially has the secret formula, where you can get lost for hours, satisfying dopamine hits with every scroll. Artists like PinkPantheress made the most of the platform, her bite-sized songs swirling in our heads for days.
It’s Not Easy to Get a TikTok Hit Anymore, according to PinkPantheress
However, the problem seems to be that there is no rhyme or reason to how something takes off on the app. It might be a new song or a record from 50 years ago; it can all get a rejuvenated boost on the Billboard charts accordingly. Moreover, PinkPantheress argued that we can sense what songs got an organic push vs something orchestrated by the label.
In an interview with the In Proximity podcast, the “Stateside” singer said that TikTok has gotten extremely saturated with people marketing their music. Everyone sees the potential to gain fame from it, and they’re desperate to try to capitalize on it. However, viewers aren’t oblivious and know when they’re being marketed to that isn’t genuine.
PinkPantheress’ advice is to approach making music with a business mindset
“Nowadays, I think not only is it very saturated as a music promotion platform, but I think Gen Z, our snouts are so sensitive. We can smell from a mile away when someone’s trying to really make a TikTok song happen,” PinkPantheress said. “I’ve been lucky that all the songs of mine that have gone viral have kind of been because I posted the song once. A fan or a fan page has been like, ‘let me post a snippet of this song,’ and it’ll go crazy on that backend.
So what does a young artist do when the formula has seemingly been patched? Ultimately, the 25-year-old crooner stressed that your priorities have to be in the right place. If music is your life, make the music. But if you want all the adulation that comes from it, you have to work accordingly.
“If you want to be famous through music, then it is a business. It’s a form of business, and you have to study it like a business. Because when someone starts a business, they want to promote their product, and your product is music. So you need to promote it like a product,” PinkPantheress explained.
The post Pinkpantheress Says There’s a ‘Sensitive’ Reason Why Its Hard for Artists To Get a Hit on TikTok Today appeared first on VICE.
