Millennial in a TikTok world

I remember the day they made Instagram compatible with my Android. Going in to my sophomore year of college during sorority rush prep week, and I remember everyone was posting pixelated photos using the five overly-processed stock filters on whatever we wanted to post, and getting 11 likes was a new fabulous feeling. Fast forward almost nine years, here we are in the age of going “TikTok Viral”, and I feel like I missed something.

I wish I could say I’m on top of this, but as I’ve looked around at other fellow millennials in music it’s obvious we’re all scrambling to figure out how to use it to our low budget marketing advantage. It is no longer enough to be posting “engaging content” regularly to Instagram (which seems to change its algorithm almost weekly), Facebook, websites, etc. Now I’m hearing if you want to have success breaking through the noise on TikTok you have to post 2-3 times DAILY. Overwhelming as it seems, I have enjoyed exploring the trends and putting my spin on them.

Sometimes I find myself wondering what it was like to be a musician before this. Instead of taking an entire afternoon content planning I could be doing something like, oh I don’t know, writing songs and making music. I guess I can take solace in the fact that songs today are only lasting between 2:30-3:15, with the hook jumping in at around :20-:30. The upside is the old gatekeepers in the industry no longer hold the same power. I can put out a song and then pay some 16-year-old with a large following on the platform to post it with a :15 second dance to it. Suddenly it’s been exposed to thousands of new eyes and ears who then get to decide if that :15 snack was enough to venture out to Spotify, Apple, etc. to hear some more. Ultimately, the hope is that it gets shared like crazy, used in the background of other videos, and blows up… I guess? Side note: that 16-year-old is definitely making more money than most of us. You go girl.

All this to say, I’ve never felt more ancient, but I’m studying up on this hodge-podge of platforms and algorithms while making music that matters. Maybe one day it’ll pop up on your feed. Find me on https://www.Tiktok.com/@emcurtmusic to make fun of me or see if I ever truly figure it out before the next wave of social media witchcraft rolls in.