Thanks to TikTok, a 15-second clip can take a song from forgotten to famous. Even with Gen Z’s short attention span, 15 seconds is all it takes for a user to fall in love with a song — and for an artist to make their streaming residual money. But are virality and success synonymous in today’s music industry? And does writing with a TikTok audience in mind diminish authenticity?

Even if you haven’t listened to all of Sabrina Carpenter’s new album, “Man’s Best Friend”, most likely you’ve heard at least 15 seconds of the top songs by scrolling through TikTok. There are edits of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” heartthrob Conrad Fisher set to “Tears,” sorority house walk-throughs set to “House Tour” and almost everyone you know has attempted the “Manchild” line dance.

Music fanatics used to have to turn on the radio or go to a record store to find their new favorite artists.  With the rise of streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, music discovery was suddenly right at listeners’ fingertips. Users took advantage of the apps’ personalized playlists and friends’ recommendations to expand their musical palettes. Now with TikTok, they can simply scroll through their “For You Page” and find hundreds of snippets of new music within seconds.

TikTok’s entire brand is built around brief videos that inform or entertain fast, and its knowledge of Gen Z’s infamously brief attention span may be part of the reason it’s helping so many artists thrive.

“The attention span of consumers nowadays is shorter,” said Professor Guillermo Page, an assistant director of the Frost School of Music’s music business and entertainment industries program. “You need to grab their attention within three to five seconds.”

When listening to a song on Spotify, you’re listening to it from the beginning to the end, whereas oftentimes on TikTok you’re hearing a meticulously chosen snippet that could be at any point in the song. Artists and record labels alike work to find the song’s most scandalous line or catchiest hook, and that’s the section they choose for TikTok to promote. The hope is that when listeners hear that snippet, they’ll be intrigued and then they’ll stream the whole song.

Mason Jerome, a first-year student studying studio music and jazz, took note of this tactic, and he felt it was oftentimes a sort of trick.

“Usually, there’s that one catchy part, and I’m very disappointed when I go back and listen, and it’s kind of just a bad song outside of that,” said Jerome, who writes his own music but does his best to stray from what is popular on TikTok.

In Jerome’s mind, pop music in particular feels more inauthentic nowadays. He explained how in some respects music feels less like an art form and more like a “media.”

“For authentic songwriters and people who are genuinely interested in the craft of … producing beautiful music,” said Jerome, “[TikTok] has ruined a lot of people’s perception of what writing music and songs really is.”

First-year musical theatre major Alex Kee disagrees. While he thinks there may have been a time where TikTok music all blurred together, he believes most artists have now begun to find their own individual voices and simply use social media to promote.

“I think there are people who legitimately write for TikTok … but I feel like that’s a very small minority,” said Kee. “A lot of times the advertisement or promotion of that can come across as a little inauthentic, but I don’t think the music itself has become more inauthentic necessarily.”

Whether artist authenticity is at stake is anyone’s argument, but TikTok’s impact on the music industry is undeniable. A self-named “driver of music discovery and artist success,” TikTok’s latest music report shared that 84% of songs that entered the Billboard Global 200 in 2024 went viral on the social media platform first.

Kee knows firsthand the ripple effect a viral clip can have on an artist’s career. His friend Isaak Wesley Isbell, who goes by the stage name The American Dawn, achieved stardom with the breakout success of “Her” which, as of September 2025, has been used in 379,100 TikTok videos and has nearly 90 million Spotify streams.

“He posted nature videos with the [song] under it,” Kee said. “People caught on and started doing covers of the song and filming their own little videos with the sound underneath it.”

Those “little videos” were far more influential than anyone could have imagined — they led The American Dawn to a monthly paycheck of approximately $30,000.

Kee pointed to the notoriously meager sums most streaming platforms offer artists in terms of revenue. On average, Spotify pays artists $0.003 per stream, while TikTok pays artists $0.03 for each video that uses their song. That might not seem like a lot, but in cases where a song goes as viral as “Her” did, it makes all the difference.

“Platforms like TikTok and a lot of these other social media [platforms] are actually making money for artists, and they’re giving them publicity,” said Kee. “They’re doing so much more for artists than a lot of these streaming apps are.”

But as powerful a tool as TikTok can be to jumpstart a musician’s career, Professor Page warns that in his experience, it takes more than a viral snippet to “define a hit or an artist’s career.”

“[A 15-second clip] could be a spark,” said Professor Page, “but there’s got to be some substance underneath for it to really flourish.”

While he admitted that TikTok is “the place to be” for emerging artists, a single “spark” won’t lead to a sustainable career. Frequent follow-up posting and subsequent creation is just as necessary as the first taste of virality.

All this to say, Professor Page sees record labels constantly prioritizing social media campaigns over traditional promotional strategies. Artists and Repertoire (A&R) representatives prioritize direct connection between artists and fans, and TikTok acts as the “perfect vehicle.”

As a result, Professor Page underscores the importance of a social media following when seeking representation. Without it, you won’t even get in the door.

“Nowadays, record labels very rarely develop an artist from scratch,” said Professor Page. “Among other things, they’re going to look at your social media footprint, and they’re going to say, ‘Okay, how many people are following you? How many people are engaging in your posts?’”

In other words, a viral clip can open doors — but virality alone doesn’t equate to success in the music industry. TikTok is a vessel, but artists must drive the ship. The musicians that come into TikTok with substance will be the ones to elicit sustainability.

words_ariana glaser. illustrations_joel wainberg. design_ sara wollman

This article was published in Distraction’s Fall 2025 print issue.

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