The Music Industries Obsession With Charting Is Hurting The Artforms Quality
Everyone seems to be chasing a hit single, but music has always been subjective, completely dependent on each individual’s preference. Today’s music landscape is obsessed with charting and mainstream success.
A lot of this madness is due to the constant bickering between fans online, on platforms such as Twitter—now X—and TikTok. Fans over equate the impact of an album with chart placement—often invalidating other factors that contribute to cultural influence. This obsession with established success has caused a change with how people consume media and their satisfaction with it as a whole.
Record companies have clearly noticed as well. Songs have grown exponentially shorter to increase the chances of them going viral on TikTok. Essentially, the shorter a song is, the better its streaming potential.
While TikTok has opened a pathway for independent artists to blow up, it has also pushed companies to resort to remixes as a way to boost streams. These remixes contain sped-up, slowed-down, and even extended versions of currently charting songs to encourage fans to buy multiple versions of the same music.
The K-pop industry has also been directly affected by TikTok , resulting in unoriginal songs that have lost any form of substance. Songs have become run-of-the-mill, following the same uninteresting structure: verse, pre-chorus, chorus, repeat.
The music industry has become oversaturated by constant trend chasing, as companies notoriously imitate what’s popular in the west.
For example, when Water by Tyla was doing immensely well, artists began to put out similar sounding songs to replicate the award-winning record. Recently, there has been an uprising in the electronic dance genre due to the success of Brat by Charli XCX.
Furthermore, musical eras don’t exist anymore—at least not to the degree that album cycles once embodied a musical era. Albums are a growing rarity due to the popularity of singles.
The promotion period lasts a few months at most, and it’s only a few weeks before artists jump to prepare for their new release.
Before, there was a protocol when it came to selling an album. Artists released music videos for multiple tracks and took the time to tell a story. Now, visuals are increasingly rare as music labels hesitate to invest in them unless the single is doing well. If they are released, the views tend to be inflated by inorganic practices such as mass streaming by fans and paid ads. Ultimately, the art of a proper era is nonexistent.
This shift in the music industry has caused a decline in the overall quality of music as artists focus more on producing hit singles rather than cohesive bodies of works. The emphasis on streaming numbers and instant gratification has led to a lack of appreciation for the artistry and storytelling that albums used to provide.
