We made it to 2021. The worst year ever, as so many have claimed, is now behind us; and 2021 is going to be a comeback trip around the sun. Even though the pandemic is worse now than it has ever been, ticking up that 0 digit to a 1 and buying a new calendar is going to fix everything.
Over the past few weeks, you’ve undoubtedly seen organizations publish various lists ranking the year’s top albums, songs, and artists. High profile lists from Billboard and Rolling Stone provide a glimpse into which songs had the greatest cultural impact and could take home hardware at the Grammy Awards. Others, from NPR to local independent organizations, focus on the undercurrents you may have missed.
I like to use these lists to see how various groups perceive popular music. Putting aside small circulation blogs and zines, there can be significant differences between rankings from major publications. The variance between major charts and year end lists is determined by their criteria, tabulations, and methods. Billboard, for example, weights songs based on streaming data, sales, radio play, and YouTube video views. However, not all data is weighted equally, and Billboard is constantly updating and reviewing their process. In 2018, a “subscription stream” (one that occurs on an account that pays for the service) equaled 1 point, but an “ad supported stream” (on the free tier) was only ⅔ of a point. 100 subscription streams were equal to a single sale, while 600 streams equaled an album sale (reference). Combined with radio plays and physical sales, Billboard produces their charts.
RollingStone has a similar methodology, but does not include terrestrial radio play. I cannot find the exact process behind their “Best Songs of 2020,” but I imagine it is a combination of their charts and editorial staff decisions. NPR’s list, similarly, appears to be entirely staff voted / editorial, as they do not produce their own charts. These three end of year lists, with their broad reach and established credibility, provide a representative sample of different approaches to the “Best Songs of 2020.”
The result is a disparate array of songs. No song appears on all three Top 10s, and the full lists are even more out of wack with each other. “Dynamite,” the smash from South Korean superstars BTS, ranked #7 on RollingStone, #38 on Billboard, and #100 on NPR. In spite of their disagreements, each of these lists is a valid snapshot of what music mattered to different groups in 2020: NPR’s list is catered to their audience, which has more esoteric tastes than the wide-appeal Hot100.
If all lists reflect the tastes and interests of a group, the most interesting list of 2020 came from TikTok. The video-sharing app burst into the mainstream last year, adding users from every age and demographic group across the United States. The songs that mattered on TikTok deserve recognition, as the app has become the primary catalyst of youth culture.
The TikTok 100
The TikTok Music Report, published on December 2nd, provided insights into how musical artists fared on the platform. TikTok boasts 80 million users in the United States, which is around 22% of the population. While that might not be as much as terrestrial radio’s 92% adult weekly reach (come on, RollingStone, you need to be including radio spins), it is still a strong representative sample of what songs mattered to TikTok users in 2020. Let’s take a look:
Only “The Box” by Roddie Ricch also landed in the Top 10 on Billboard, and “Wap” and “Savage” were the only songs to cross into NPR and RollingStone’s Top 10s. But still, TikTok claims its algorithms and creators had significant impact on the music industry in 2020:
[on the TikTok Top 100]: those songs racked up over 50 billion video views on over 125 million creations, and 5 of them reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Nearly 90 songs that trended on the platform in 2020 climbed onto the Top 100 charts in the U.S., with 15 of those reaching #1 on a Billboard chart.
These numbers are impressive: 21 songs (excluding Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You”) went #1 this year, and for 25% to come from TikTok would more than certify the platform as a verified hit maker. But the more I thought I about how songs go viral on TikTok, the less enthralled I became with their claims. In reality, TikTok is no more than an interactive billboard, not a democratic platform where the best music content rises to the top. TikTok is simply another marketing tool for the biggest players in the music industry.
Every song that went #1 on the US Hot 100 this year was a major label track: from “The Box” (Atlantic) to “Mood” (Columbia). Even “Savage Love,” which was based off the the 2019 viral “Laxed - (Siren Beat)” by Jawsh 685, did not top the Hot 100 until Jason Derulo illegally sampled the song and released it under Columbia Records. So all of the songs that TikTok supposedly “helped reach #1” were backed by the biggest labels with biggest marketing budgets, which have been leveraged to get their songs premium placement on the platform. Business Insider has reported that influencers can get paid in the thousands of dollars to promote songs on TikTok. This exchange of money for promotion is illegal in the radio industry (payola), but U.S. law clearly hasn’t caught up to the tech industry. This loophole can be exploited by anyone, but primarily benefits those with deep pockets. Instead of buying TV and newspaper ads to sell records, labels are buying placement on TikTok creations.
TikTok isn’t crowning chart toppers. These songs likely would have been successful without the app. “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd was going to be a hit without the associated dance trend. Why? Because he’s an established artist backed by the $8,000,000,000/year Universal Music Group.
The initial claim of “Nearly 90 songs that trended on the platform in 2020 climbed onto the Top 100 charts in the U.S.” is confusing at best. Are they talking about the Hot100, or all of the Billboard charts? Billboard has over 100 different charts. Many songs you’ll never hear place or top these charts every week. “Rise Up (Lazarus)” by CAIN went #1 on the Billboard Christian AC chart, but it has merely 2.8 million streams on Spotify. Compare that to Billie Eilish’s “Therefore I Am,” which at #2 on the Hot 100, has 142 million streams. These down-ballot charts can be indicators of future stars, but are not significant on their own.
Right now, TikTok’s impact is still akin to the famous chick-and-egg problem. Did “Say So” go #1 in May because of the viral dance by influencer Haley Sharpe or because Doja Cat is signed to RCA Records (Sony) and the song had been on the radio since January? Or is it because Dr. Luke ripped off that addictive juicy guitar riff from indie artist Skylar Spence?
While the allure of virality on TikTok is irresistible, the influencer-driven platform is only serving to reinforce major label primacy. While some independent musicians have seen success in terms of views, external streams, and even sales, the players with the biggest budgets will continue to dominate as they have on Spotify and commercial radio. TikTok didn’t “level the field”—they just built another one.
TikTok Top Genres
The TikTok field is a big one, reaching 22% of the US population, 60% of which is between the ages of 16-24: creating a potential focus group of 46 million young Americans. Marketing wisdom would suggest that musical trends on TikTok could be extrapolated to the youth population as a whole. So which genres are most popular with young TikTok users?
Before reacting to Hip-Hop/Rap’s heavyweight performance on TikTok, we need to understand what this pie chart is telling us.
the graphic above lists the top 10 genres on the platform by number of video creations, represented by the percentage of video creations with sounds from each genre.
TikTok measured genre performance by “video creations,” not song streams. The way music is used on TikTok generally falls into three categories: dance, lip-sync, or soundtrack.
Dance - the dances that succeed the most on TikTok tend to be weird fusions of the macarena and interpretative hand motions.
Lip-Sync - incorporating lyrics into a comedic bit, thirst trap, or other non-dance content.
Soundtrack - use of a song in the background of any piece of content, be it humor, informational, etc.
The takeaway here is that the majority of songs that go viral on TikTok are those with spoken-word and easily understandable lyrics. They can be molded, edited, and incorporated into any type of content; whereas a song with less understandable lyrics is relegated to the “soundtrack” category. Even the most popular dances rely on some interpretation of lyrics.
This lyric-focused content brings musical genres with spoken-word stylings to the forefront: Hip/Hip-Rap, Pop, and Musicals. It’s no coincidence that songs from musicals have suddenly become TikTok trends: they’re easily utilized, and everyone on the app gives off BIG theatre-kid energy.
A final point regarding songs used in “creations”—no one is using full songs. People are pulling a maximum snippet of 60 seconds from a track to pair with their dance, comedy bit, or multi-level marketing scheme. Songs don’t go viral for being great singles, they’re chosen for their utility in content—but maybe that’s what makes a song great in the twenty-first century. We should keep an eye on the Billboard and TikTok charts. I believe that they will always look different, because a song chorus that works great in a TikTok bit may not sound as good in the context of a 3-minute radio single.
One thing that I know for sure is that we can expect music publishers and record labels to double-down on Hip-Hop/Rap as a genre: it’s already popular in mainstream culture, and it has proven to succeed on the most popular app for young Americans. Major label Rock will evolve to incorporate more spoken-word or musical theater stylings, and bands who already fit that mold will receive marketing priority—think AJR and Panic! at the Disco.
We can also anticipate Disney to boost production and marketing of musicals and their movie songs. The entertainment corporation will move away from traditional pop stars like Miley Cyrus and The Jonas Brothers, and invest in High School Musical-type projects. In fact, it’s already happened. A bunch of TikTok creators, unaffiliated with Disney, began writing Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical. The project eventually attracted the talents of Wayne Brady, Adam Lambert, and Ashley Park; and it premieres tonight.
While I remain unconvinced that TikTok can create a #1 single on its own, the platform’s explosion in popularity will inevitably alter the music industry in the styles of music that get prioritized, published, and popularized. Our popular music is being influenced and molded not to match our evolving culture, but to fit neatly into an online marketing strategy.
My Top 20 of 2020
I host a radio show every week on WZBC 90.3FM in Boston. I crunched the numbers and here are the Top 20 songs spun on the program last year.
You know I'm suspect of any list from 2020 that does not include Baby Queen's "Internet Religion".