👀 An Unpopular Opinion About What Would 2025 Look Like In The Music Industry
TikTok dead, Spotify following Facebook irelevancy, intoxicating AI music and more
A bit too optimistic plans, pitches, analytics & insights, sleepless nights in the studio, cocky artists, unanswered emails, agents that promise the stars and the moon, yet they deliver close to nothing, youtube milestones, Spotify bots, endless discussions with ChatGPT (many of them ending with ChatGPT appologizing for misguiding us). You know it already: it’s called reality. No one says we should prepare for the worse, but it’s good to keep contact with your surroundings and ground yourself into reality before it’s too late (for your budgets 😂). As 2025 started to sneak into our lives, so do some opinions about what trends would the music industry follow this year. As time has become one of the most important and expensive resources out there, we spare you some time and money: here’s an unpopular ChatGPT-free opinion about the 2025 in the music industry.
The Rise and Fall of TikTok
As of the 19th of January, TikTok is history in the United States. The Chinese social media platform was the main drive for success for a huge number of artists, both independent as well as signed by major labels. Lil Nas X was propelled by TikTok in the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 2019, followed by Doja Cat and her TikTok dance challenges in 2020. Olivia Rodriguez’ emotionally charged Drivers License in 2021 got viral on TikTok with tens of thousands of teenagers relating with Olivia and posting content while using Drivers License as audio. Then came the massive success of Masked Wolf’s Astronaut In The Ocean, used by virtually any skater, roller and thug wannabe in their amateur videos.
For sure, music has contributed to TikTok’s success in becoming the go-to platform for short form video content. Their totally different algorithms based approach into how to serve targeted content to their users paved the way to virtually anyone with a cameraphone to becoming an influencer on TikTok. It left Facebook and Instagram behind to question how they managed to lose the social media battle in such a short amount of time. The main selling point for TikTok is that you can escape your bubble into a bigger same-interests one with just one video.
Yet, expanding so quickly and being owned by “the enemy” dug TikTok’s own grave. Citing concerns about national security, data privacy, and sovereignty, India banned 59 Chinese apps (including TikTok) in July 2020, when geo-political tensions reached a maximum high. Fearing that the Chinese government could access sensitive user information, the US govenrment asked ByteDance (TikTok’s mother company) to sell its US operations to a local company or face a nationwide ban. Guess what: starting with January 2025, the USA territory is TikTokless… or free…
Australia and other countries are exploring ways to limit access for teenagers to social media platforms (proven to be toxic for them). In the European Unsion, the platform is under increased scrutiny due to recent incidents of electoral interference and ongoing concerns about data privacy and security. The situation remains dynamic, with potential for further regulatory actions depending on future developments.
TikTok looks now like an Imperial Star Destroyer war ship from Star Wars, hit by X Wing fighters from all directions, while still trying to reach its destination. Unfortunatelly for many independent artists, one of their biggest assets for music promotion will be soon gone. Even if Instagram will try to fill the void left behind TikTok (that’s a totally different social media beast, really hard to go viral outside your existent fanbase), the music industry will need to figure out a way to reach the masses.
Or maybe it’s time to stop chasing the viral effect in music and start building a community of true fans that could financially support the artistic act while contributing actively to promote their favourite music.
Is Spotify Following The Facebook Fail?
Not sure about you, but my Spotify interface has become cluttered with so many things, that it really took the joy of using a simple player to just listen to the music. As of today, I have a music feed tailored to my music listening habits (not!), a myriad of AI-generated playlists (junk, mostly!), music videos, podcasts with people I have never heard of and other stuff. It feels like I am back in the late 2010s when facebook was leading the social media revolution and it was trying to stuff me with so many features, options and feed suggestions that has eventually prevented me for using facebook. It became irelevant.
Trying to hook the listener with visual content, just to keep their screens unlocked (and eventually start to push ads youtube style) and also adding social media features to enhance the users’ experience inside the app, Spotify is going away from the concept of a music app as a gateway to access my favourite music and discover new artists. All I need is a clean interface with control buttons, lossless quality music and a few options to organize my music. Spotify used to be good at this. In the looming light of TikTok’s bans all over the world, Spotify will lose some users and some traction, also. I am not sure if paying for a music service filled with AI generated music and bots is still feasible in 2024. Yes, Spotify has tens of millions of users and potential fans. Yet the effort put in reaching new listeners cannot be sustained on the long run by independent artists and my guess is that at some point we will have an Universal Music app, a Sony Music App and a Warner Music app, leaving the independent music scene in the muddy waters of Spotify.
AI Bubble Will Eventually Burst And Poison Everything Around
Imagine a future where AI music is being played by bots on Spotify to generate revenue for the prompt engineer behind the keyboard. A future where the music studio is reduced to an iPad. Wait a minute: this is the reality of 2025! We’re living in the future! And it’s not the junk music made especially to trigger the DSP’s algorithms for generating more and more streams. AI is getting so good at generating music, that you cannot tell the difference between a human made one and an artificially produced one.
Media agencies and content creators don’t need to license music for their ads and media content, as they can create all of it with a 10 USD monthly subscription at one of these AI powered services. Radio stations don’t list credits for the songs they broadcast (actually who cares if the song was created by a human or by a computer?). Creating a song based on “create a song in style of Nirvana, but with a Doja Cat touch and lyrics inspired by Beatles’ life” prompt will not generate royalties for any of the artists mentioned in the prompt. The legal and ethical challenges are so complex that no one can really understand what a copyright infringement means in the AI generated music context. Large tech companies will become important players in the music industry (Hello, Google!), being both “creators” and gatekeepers. Is this scary enough? Well, if the music platforms are not already oversaturated with disposable music, then prepare for an endless supply of AI-generated music, that would not only devaluate music as a whole, but it will lead to a global inequity, as the voice of local cultures with limited acces to AI technology would be covered in the AI noise.
Record Labels Are Becoming More Powerful Then Ever
Recent years introduced the DIY concept in the music industry. Artists can take their career into their own hands, managing the whole chain: from producing the music, to distributing and promoting it! This means 100% of the royalties paid directly to them, without the obligation to be pleased only with some breadcrumbs. This sounds amazing, giving all the tools at hand, from content creation to digital distribution, from social media management to music licensing. In theory.
In reality there’s an enormous amount of work just to stand a chance to get a few fans close to you. Networking, hours of content creation, advertising campaigns, playlisting, studio time… just to name a few of the actions one independent artists must commit in order to build up a moderatly successful music career.
Actually, this context is the most fertile ground for record labels, especially the New Age ones, that were born out of powerful Spotify playlists, like Soave - a record label fueled by the power of 1 million followers playlists. Unlike traditional record labels, these new players adapt quickly to the market. Cross promoting artists with similar labels, access to a huge list of already popular producers to releases quality remixes, promoting label supported events at major festivals like Amsterdam Dance Event and the list is open! Acting both as curators and promoters, small independent labels are the key to growing as an artist in 2025!
No More Free Music!
It’s a fact: artists receive pennies for their music being played on digital streaming platforms. At the other end of this controversy is the listener, who got used to have access to all the music in the world for free (be it the ad supported Spotify free plan or youtube filled with ads). But, as you pay for movie on demand services, maybe it’s time to pay for music on demand services, too.
The model seems to work, why not apply it for the music scene? Sure, music piracy will be revived, but on the other hand, how many of us downloaded music to their computers in the past couple of years, then sync the music library with their phones? That’s so 2000s, right? The world is ready to pay for a music service that offers as promised: music produced by humans paid for their work. There are several options that could be explored: limited listening time based on subscription tiers, limited genre access based the same tiers, unlock some special features, directly support artists within the app and so much more.
There will be some major changes in the way we access music and 2025 could be the start for this mini revolution. All we have to do is relax and witness the life unroll in front of us, as the best (music) is yet to come!