IndexThe New Method of Music ExposureNew Paths in the Music IndustryThe Economic Impact on Interest GroupsConclusionAs the world rapidly moves towards a technology-based society, it is not surprising that the way we produce, and access to music has changed significantly. A recent contribution to this evolution has been the billion-user app: TikTok, which has peaked in today's meme-supporting society. TikTok is a social media platform that incorporates music where users upload and interact with other users on a 15-second video of lip-syncing, dance challenges, pranks, or acting memes set to music. The songs are usually associated with the content of the video and vary in genres such as pop, rap, R&B, country and electronic. Sound effects can also come from other popular videos, films, or an original user creation, and these combine to build into the "hype" of a trend or create the next "new thing." The rebirth of the previously equivalent Musical.ly app was marked in November 2017 when Beijing-based company ByteDance acquired the app for $1 billion and merged it into TikTok and Douyin (Chinese version) in August 2018. This Chinese-owned video sharing app has spread virulently across the world leading to a global phenomenon, naming its parent company ByteDance as the $75 billion "world's most valuable startup". This global explosion of TikTok has impacted the music industry in three main ways; the way consumers access and are exposed to music, creating a new path to entry into the music industry and an economic impact on rights holders. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayThe New Method of Music ExposureIn this constantly evolving modern era with the continuous development of technology, there has been a major transition where music has become mobile. The digitization of music in the mp3 format led to the reduction of CD production, just as vinyl records became obsolete with the invention of CDs. This has not only resulted in decreasing production costs and thus the decline of the production industry, but has also meant that music can now be easily incorporated into the digital world, giving rise to numerous different streaming platforms such as Spotify and SoundCloud. More recently, TikTok has effectively combined music streaming with social media and managed to create unique trends around the world. This creative combination aligns with society's existing need to connect and interact online as well as the desire for fame, but also exposes a variety of new songs via virulent user-created videos. So, despite being a video-oriented platform, TikTok is powerful in shaping the music industry. The unlimited shelf of recorded music in the digital world grants users access to a wide variety of songs, and artists alike, a wide audience. TikTok provides a library of licensed music into which users can overlay their own videos or use their own original creation. This gives consumers a diverse selection of musical exposure that they wouldn't have had in the past. Songs that go viral on TikTok are “refreshingly unpredictable” and are not “pop streambait” (Cooper, 2019), allowing for the discovery of new songs. This was evident in the success of Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road"; a country-rap and iLoveFriday's "Mia Khalifa"; a hip-hop from Atlanta, which deviates from the standard pop genre. These successescan be credited to hashtag challenges on the app; #YeeHawChallenge for 'Old Town road' has a total of 185.2 million views and #HitOrMiss for 'Mia Khalifa' has played over four million TikTok videos. Songs from popular artists also make up a large portion of videos on TikTok, however Cooper explains that "that's not what defines the platform" and instead it's "strange, relatively unknown voices like (iLoveFriday member) Smokehijabi that get noticed." . TikTok has done the opposite, providing artists with a potential audience of 1-78 billion users worldwide (Sensor Tower, 2019) with 510 million monthly users (Dareportal, 2019). Australia and New Zealand alone have 1.4 million monthly active users, generating 1.6 billion video views each month (We Are Social, 2019). TikTok's explosive growth of 500% year-over-year since 2017 illustrates the continued expansion of this app where users spend an average of 52 minutes a day binging on videos. TikTok's daily contribution to individuals generates countless hours of involuntary exposure to music, where songs from already popular artists are exposed to a larger audience and new songs become recognized as the "TikTok song." Taylor Lorenz described TikTok as a "really effective distribution network" with "a lot of song discovery mechanisms so you can search for music very easily and find things that resonate." New Paths in the Music Industry Online platforms have enabled many alternative paths that bypass selection agency control, and TikTok has opened a new door in the music industry. With no restrictions for users in the app (excluding the minimum age of 13), TikTok is easily accessible to all, and this low barrier to entry gives every user an equal opportunity to potentially achieve fame, resulting in economic abundance. According to Frank Woodworth, founder of Glacial Concepts (artist marketing consultancy), the platform provides two useful tools in music marketing; an algorithm that allows TikTok creators to reach a large audience without necessarily having many followers through suggested content and the ability to play trending songs and pair them with millions of viral videos – an "exponential" or "multi-viral" promotion ' (Woodworth, 2019). This allows small musicians to accumulate views without the overwhelming need to post frequently, as required in other social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram. This ease of recording, playing, marketing and distributing recordings across platforms reduces the need for a recording agency, thus increasing the potential for successful entrepreneurship to bypass the traditional agency selection process. The impact of TikTok's ability to provide access was demonstrated by Lil Nas a digital marketplace of original beats. When it was first released in December 2018, the song was a lost track on SoundCloud. Going from a negative bank account to multi-million dollar roots to a hashtag he created on TikTok that went viral - #yeehawchallenge - where people dress in cowboy clothes and dance, with more than 6 million users in the US recreating videos of TikTok on his songs. The #foryou page on the app played an important role, encouraging users to participate in hashtag challenges. This brought the song "Old Town Road" to the top of Billboard's Hot 100 charts, which held its position for 17 weeks,titling itself the longest-running No. 1 single in Billboard history. Lil Nas His success on TikTok led him to collaborate with Billy Ray Cyrus on a remix and sign with Columbia Records. With more than 500 million monthly users, TikTok has become a hot spot for music creation, sharing, marketing and distribution – the four functions of the recorded music industry – which have removed barriers or restrictions to entry, made possible from today's technological changes. Economic impact on interests groupsDespite its effectiveness in promotion, the ease with which TikTok videos can be downloaded and played can raise copyright issues for rights holders. Rights holders include songwriters, artists, publishers and record labels, intertwined by the granting of rights in contract law. Copyright law gives the owner of the work the exclusive right to reproduce the work, to communicate it to the public and to give the allowed others to play or publicly perform the song. Therefore, the owners of the work have the right to negotiate the terms on which they grant permission, usually in the form of royalties. Mechanical royalties are paid to the owner of the copyright in the music and lyrics (songwriter/publisher) every time a "device" is sold, including digital files that can be downloaded in the modern era. Performance royalties apply when a song is performed or communicated to the public, in situations such as radio stations or background music in public places. In any video played on TikTok, both copyrights should be considered: the mechanical production right (recordings owned by the record label) and the public performance right (song compositions owned by the songwriter/publisher), where violation results in legal damages of $150,000 in America (Forcone, 2019). Therefore, TikTok should acquire a sync that grants them permission to embed each song with images for 15 seconds. While this right should be granted under the terms of the copyright owners (author/publisher), it is usually licensed under the technology companies' own terms. This is due to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which ensures that companies are exempt from liability for infringing their users' copyrights, since they instruct their users not to do so and are not "aware" of the people doing the infringing. This places the burden on artists to report a legendary DMCA takedown notice of every single violation, which could be millions in a case like “Mia Khalifa” or “Old Town Road.” Jeff Price, CEO of Audium (a company specializing in licensing and royalties on digital platforms) reminds us that Musical.ly (formerly TikTok) lawyers are non-negotiable, saying "either you can sign this contract and get paid something, or you can't sign the contract and your music will still be here but you won't get paid anything. You'll have to deal with DMCA takedowns Goodbye' In the terms and conditions, TikTok directly states "by submitting User Content via the Services, you hereby grant us... the right. to reproduce sound recordings (and make mechanical reproductions..., and publicly perform and publicly communicate sound recordings... all on a royalty-free basis... to any third party, including, but not limited to, an owner of the copyright of a sound recording (for example, a record label), a copyright owner of a work.