“Don't make an effort. Do the minimum”: how TikTok is killing the video clip as we knew it

On August 1, 1981, MTV –Music Television– began broadcasting, the cable television network.

The first video he programmed was highly symbolic:

("The video has killed the radio star") from The Buggles.

The era of the music video had begun, a genre called to reign in popular culture: in the eighties and nineties, it built the most recognizable identities of pop stardom, shaped the most remembered icons and colonized the minds of listeners and their collective memory, which could no longer dissociate the songs from the images of their videos.

But that culture went into decline with the arrival of the internet, or a little before.

“First music videos disappeared from free-to-air networks because record companies tried to combat piracy losses by charging significant amounts for their broadcast, so these could only be seen on paid music channels.

There was a certain competition for the audience, always light years away from the consumption of movies, sports or documentaries, but the hottest Latin video clips were always a good night option for platforms without porn.

All this lasted until the arrival of YouTube, which almost completely ended these music video channels”, says Javier Lorbada, who was director of one of the most important studios in Spain, Sol Música, between 1997 and 2014, and currently works as

in digital communication for artists, record companies and

.

"Video killed the radio star", by the Buggles, It all started with them.

YouTube was born in 2005 and is the second most visited website in the world after Google.

With this platform, as Lorbada recalls, "the way of consuming videos changed, as happened with movies and series after the appearance of Netflix".

That made MTV undertake “a desperate flight, completely changing its concept and forgetting that the M in its logo came from the word music.

It tried reality shows, contests, series, movies, until today, in which it is a varied container of programs aimed at adolescents and young people in which practically everything fits as long as it is attractive to its advertisers.

But a new paradigm shift came at the end of 2016 and from China, with the TikTok social network, which, in the midst of a pandemic, became the most popular in the world.

Now, this platform threatens to be the one that sets the rules of the game in music promotion.

So much so, that the artist Halsey has publicly denounced that her record label has prohibited her from releasing her new song, she said, "unless she faked a viral moment on TikTok."

The American thus joins an increasingly long list of stars who have been critical of such demands, such as Florence Welch, Ed Sheeran, Charli XCX and FKA Twigs.

“They are forced to constantly generate content to satisfy the current neoliberal machinery.

This has always been the case to a lesser extent, but I can imagine that nowadays it must be hardly bearable and very exhausting”,

From Rosalía to Pink Floyd, for the new virality

Other stars, however, have enthusiastically embraced the platform, aware of its promotional power.

This is the case of Rosalía, who last March premiered her

with an exclusive

for the Chinese social network that included live interpretations of her songs, visual fantasies and real-time video interviews with famous friends such as Ibai Llanos or Rauw Alexander.

But it does not happen only with the idols of Generation Z (the main consumer of TikTok).

More unexpected has been the news, revealed this week, that Pink Floyd themselves have made their entire catalog of songs freely available in the TikTok sound library and will post exclusive videos on the platform regularly.

“It's more and more common for people to discover music on TikTok and if you don't have a presence there, you're going to be closing yourself off to a huge promotion channel.

Perhaps a new generation of users who have never listened to Pink Floyd will now be able to discover them,” says Laura Estudillo, who, after working in the Warner communication department, founded the Panorámica agency in 2017, which works with artists such as Chanel and Alizzz.

She adds Estudillo that “the first thing is that the artist feels comfortable with the content that she shares.

If he does it unwillingly or is seen to be imposed or forced, the public notices it, and that on platforms like TikTok can be counterproductive.

The great attraction of this network, she adds, is its unprecedented ability to go viral.

Without even the need to have followers,

Nick Mason (drums), Rick Wright (keyboards), Roger Waters (vocals and bass) and David Gilmour (guitar): Pink Floyd in Belsize Park, London, in October 1968. They knew nothing about TikTok at the time.STORM THORGERSON

But it has also meant a paradigm shift in terms of format.

“TikTok starts from a severe attention deficit.

They're stretching out how long videos can be, but they don't work as well as short ones and you still can't fit a whole song.

For the artist, the content he makes on that platform works more like an accompaniment.

And in an idyllic case of success thanks to TikTok, it must be said that having viral audio with the competition that exists is almost a miracle, ”says Ainhoa ​​Marzol, a cultural communicator specialized in new digital trends.

"If years ago they had told me that content consumption would be in vertical format, I would not have believed it," adds Laura Estudillo.

"Now even the screens of the festivals are already adapted to the format of the stories."

“As a social network I prefer Instagram,

but without a doubt the key is in TikTok right now”, indicates the urban music artist Bea Pelea.

"With it you can create cheaper and more accessible audiovisual content that can give it a significant boost."

The ruin and the need to shoot video clips

“Does it make sense to shoot video clips in 2022?

Can you afford NOT to record them?” asked

musician Javier Carrasco, better known by the alias Betacam, in April on his Twitter account.

After sharing his

of

He posted: “Here I left a real fortune and for what?

No way.

Moral: don't make an effort.

Do the minimum: dance for Instagram and TikTok and run”.

In the thread, fellow musicians like Joe Crepúsculo, seconded him in his opinions.

Today, Carrasco clarifies them: “At first, when you start, making a video clip is something new and exciting, but as the years go by, it becomes more difficult to wrap your head around it.

It is still a laborious thing, an additional and strenuous effort, but, deep down, I think it is worth it.

It's still a sunk investment, like almost everything in music, but it makes you stick your head out for a moment in the sea of ​​daily and weekly news”, he indicates.

Does it make sense to record video clips in 2022?

Can you afford NOT to record them?

https://t.co/eNRjRVFSc1

– Betacam (@Betacam_) April 13, 2022

Logically, the economic possibilities vary according to the level of popularity of the artist, but, in the independent segment, the budgets that are handled are very low: approximately between one thousand and five thousand euros per video clip, when a

30-second advertising can cost 180,000 euros on average.

That also creates frustrations among musicians with a non-massive profile.

"I would have liked to record more videos, because I attach great importance to them, but I want to do cool and up-to-date things, and our economic possibilities don't allow it," says Bea Pelea, urban music singer and songwriter.

The business, in fact, is also ruinous for the producers and practically everything is done as favors.

Luis Cerveró confesses that he stopped directing videos in 2018, when his first child was born.

“A week before I finished shooting the last one I did,

from Bizarro Love Triangle, but I decided since then that I would only leave the house to do paid work.”

In that case, the budget was six thousand euros, but it is almost always assumed that the money goes entirely to production.

“Nobody gets paid, not the cameras, not the makeup artists… I've been paid twice in my life to make a video, and I've made more than sixty.

One time very early in my career, when I shot one of the Mutant Kids in Flash and I kept the entire budget, because I really needed it, and the other time is when I did the second Pharrell Williams video

because I I felt very stupid shooting the first one (Marilyn Monroe) and not charging anything for it”.

Cerveró was one of the directors of

most demanded of the millennium in the independent scene, and has worked with international artists such as Battles, Liars or Javiera Mena and national artists such as Christina Rosenvinge, Marlango, Joe Crepúsculo, Los Punsetes, La Bien Querida or Mishima.

“For an artist, it is essential to continue thinking about having the largest possible number of videos of all their releases”, says Javier Lorbada.

“Perhaps it is no longer so important to have a large budget to make an old-fashioned video clip, with meticulous photography, makeup, hairdressing, lighting, special effects and dizzying editing.

The digital world constantly demands new content in order to achieve greater exposure and reach the largest possible number of viewers.

That forces artists and their companies to constantly post music videos of the same song.

In addition to the video clip, many have

(with the lyrics of the song),

(small visual montages without great pretensions), duets, versions in the studio, at home, acoustically, in the rehearsal room… The truth is that all this strategy works, and the more videos you have, the better results you get”.

"If we talk in economic terms, it is very difficult to get profitability," says Laura Estudillo.

“You have to be very positioned to be able to monetize it.

For those labels that cover the costs, it is also difficult to recover the investment, but they generally have more muscle to put together

digital that helps them win viewings.

More and more artists are deciding not to make videos, but even with that, it's still a good promotional tool.

You can have more travel in the digital press if you present the song with a video clip, you can promote it on platforms by adapting the format in small or vertical pieces and, above all, it continues to be one of the most efficient tools that a group has to present itself to an audience.

I think of Rosalía or C. Tangana as current references of Generation Z, who have managed to build a very powerful iconography around their image, within which the importance of their videos is undeniable.

Although the platforms allow us to give another dimension to the artist through photos or

, the strength of the video clip continues to be that of placing the artist in a utopian and highly aspirational dimension”.

“Just as in the 1980s and 1990s the video clip explored itself as art and played with it a bit, I think that today all this is outdated and it has been assumed that its function is more aesthetic, it serves, above all, to mark or emphasize the tone that the artist wants to give to his own image”, points out Ainhoa ​​Marzol.

“But I don't think it's going to go away.

Music is an emotional industry that is too fond of doing things the way they've always been done.

What I do think is that the form will expand.

We are already seeing videos adapted to Spotify, others with key moments to play on TikTok.

If the metaverse reaches a port, I would imagine some more interactive video clips within it, perhaps pulling something similar to video game format discs like

”, concludes the journalist.

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