‘Fleeting’: Aussie artist Matt Corby slams TikTok musos

An ARIA award-winning singer and songwriter has spoken out against artists using TikTok to crack the music industry.

Aussie artist Matt Corby has slammed TikTok musicians. Picture: Supplied

Australian musician Matt Corby has spoken out against TikTok as a method to launch a music career, predicting any success from the app will only be “fleeting”.

Despite the controversy around data security and its links with China, video-sharing app TikTok continues to be a platform for aspiring musicians to share their passion.

With more than one billion users every month – nearly 40 per cent of whom are aged between 18 and 24 – the app has launched the music careers of many songwriters who previewed their work online.

These days a viral TikTok song can result in a massive payday.

Songs that trend on TikTok often end up charting on the Billboard 100 or Spotify Viral 50.

Taylor Gayle Rutherford, known by her stage name Gayle, was nominated for a Grammy after going viral on TikTok last year, and more recently Miley Cyrus topped the charts for her single Flowers thanks in part to the song’s popularity on TikTok.

And it seems even record labels are jumping on the bandwagon and encouraging artists to create a viral moment using their music.

Sometimes even influencers are hired to help a song take off, sparking a wave of user-generated posts from their fans.

However, not everyone supports the new marketing technique.

Aussie musician Matt Corby says TikTok music careers are ‘fleeting’.

ARIA award-winning singer/songwriter Corby, who was runner-up on Australian Idol in 2007, told NCA NewsWire he didn’t think the trend of aspiring musicians launching their careers on TikTok would last.

“I mean, anything that is viral is so fleeting, right? It needs to be backed up with hard work and craftsmanship,” he said.

He said it was hard for listeners to gain any real meaning from TikTok musicians as artists if all they were exposed was a quick clip of a song.

“Do you want to go and see a show of that? You don’t know yet, there’s not a lot of trust between the punter and the musician,” Corby said.

“You get no real experience of an artist with them editing a video of themselves singing a song. It’s a great way if you’re a record label to maybe find a one-in-1000 talent, that’s kind of cool.

“But then there’s still so much hard work that needs to be done developing that artist and connecting them with the right people and putting out the right records and getting them lined up and getting them playing shows.”

He’s not alone in his disdain for the app.

British singer FKA Twigs has spoken out against the rise of musicians using the app to share their music.

“All record labels ask for are TikToks and I got told off today for not making enough effort,” she told fans in May last year.

Halsey has also spoken out against the marketing tactic, sharing a video alleging her label was holding back a single release until they created a “viral moment”.

“My record company is saying that I can’t release it unless they can fake a viral moment on TikTok,” she said.

Scottish performer Lewis Capaldi made multiple videos on the app in November last year after he announced he was releasing a new single.

In the posts, Capaldi, who has been nominated for multiple Grammy Awards, grew increasingly frustrated that this was how his song Pointless would garner success.

“I honestly thought at this point in my career, I would be able to just sh*t out music and it would fly to the top of the charts, no bother whatsoever,” Capaldi joked.

“It’s been absolutely the opposite of that. I’ve never worked so hard in my life. It’s disgusting.”

Lewis Capaldi said he had never worked so hard in his life trying to get a song to go viral. Picture: Gareth Cattermole//Getty Images

Ashnikko used the app to gain a huge following. Picture: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

In another video, he revealed his record label had asked him to make TikToks to “help your next single go viral”.

At a show in late November, Capaldi shared another video captioned “POV: you’re on stage in front of 20k people singing your song back to you but you can’t enjoy it because your next single hasn’t gone viral on TikTok”.

Success from TikTok

Despite big names speaking out against the app, plenty are using it to their advantage and seeing great success from it.

Ashnikko, a singer and rapper from America, saw her first single Stupid go viral on TikTok in 2019.

Since then, she’s had major success with her releases, with another track reaching nearly half a billion streams.

Gayle put a call out on the platform when she was 17, asking for song ideas when she received a query asking her to write a break-up song using the alphabet.

From there, the teenager’s song “abcedfu” went viral, with nearly one billion streams on Spotify alone.

Nancy Berman had been the one to inspire the song, and while her comment had seemed organic, many speculated it had been planned after sleuths discovered Ms Berman was a marketing manager at Atlantic Records.

The history of TikTok

TikTok, which took over from another app called musical.ly, relaunched in August 2018 and uses an intelligent algorithm to target specific content to each user for a personalised experience.

It quickly became the most downloaded app on the App store that same year.

Some users have turned it into their livelihoods, using it to promote goods or services, much like Instagram influencers.

However, thousands create videos daily purely for the fun of it, using viral sounds and different filters.

In 2013, Facebook hit one billion users – the most of any social media platform.

But by 2019, TikTok had already gained half of that, eventually reaching more than one billion in 2022.

The app musical.ly was soon merged to create TikTok.

TikTok now has more than one billion users. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Tim Pascoe