Collage of @chloeslater333 Via The Xavierite
In the six years since its launch, TikTok (formerly known as Musical.ly) has blown up by cultivating trends that capture the attention of the masses. Modern musicians on TikTok have created a new trend to try and chase viral fame, but they seem to only set their songs up for failure.
When Musical.ly was first released in 2014, the app was a playground for new music, choreographed dances, and short-form comedy. After rebranding to TikTok in 2018, content creation diversified to include lifestyle blogs, informational accounts, and various niche communities that attracted active audiences.
The TikTok of today is wildly expansive compared to the app’s first form, but the focus on music has never been more central to the platform’s potential for skyrocketing careers.
Consequently, singer-songwriters on TikTok have come under scrutiny for many promotion trends in the last few years.
Remember when everyone proclaimed to have written “The Song of the Summer”? What about when “indie” bands like the T**** Stamps seemed to appear out of nowhere with carefully crafted, industry-planted aesthetics trying to build off of whatever was popular that month?
Even extending to the song material, singers have prioritized catchy tunes over anything with substance, leading to hordes of infantile songs based on nursery rhymes or corrupted nostalgia such as “abcdefu” by Gayle or “mad at disney” by Salem Ilese.
The latest trend spreading like wildfire is soft launching a demo/snippet and either failing to release the finished track before the hype dies down or losing the viral appeal with the full version.
In early Feb. 2023, Peter McPoland (@petermcpoland) released a video teasing an original song with a handful of striking lyrics. A few weeks later, a new teaser was released with the title: “Digital Silence.”
Viewers now knew what to call the song but still had no idea when it would be released. In the meantime, McPoland kept filming videos using the same snippet from his demo, with the TikTok sound eventually gaining more attention than his promotion campaign.
Other users were using the “Digital Silence” snippet for edits, as a backing track for commentary, or lip sync material. Many of the videos using the audio gained more likes and views than any of McPoland’s promos.
Around two months later, the full song was released in April 2023, only to be met with ample criticism. Many listeners had grown sick of the song after hearing the same few lines all over their For You Page (FYP) and believed the rest of the track didn’t live up to the small clip.
Ironically, the audio’s success ended up hindering the song’s.
In another case, a demo by Big Thief (“Vampire Empire”) went viral on TikTok in March of 2023. A clip from a live performance of the unreleased song started circulating and quickly found many eager listeners who were disappointed to learn it wasn’t yet available for streaming.
Excitement for the song’s full version continued until Big Thief took to TikTok to announce the release date after months of anticipation. In July 2023, the official “Vampire Empire” was released on all streaming platforms.
Immediately, the full song was divisive. Many changes had been made from the popular demo, ranging from altered lyrics to removed instruments. The vocal delivery itself was drastically different as well.
Flocks of people took to their keyboards to share their opinions on the release, many claiming the demo was better and that the finished product was as disappointing as it was delayed.
To this day, many creators who use the song in videos stick with the demo audio rather than the official release.
A pattern had clearly emerged for those looking for it. There were some creators like Leith Ross (“We’ll Never Have S**”) or Katie Gregson-Macleod (“complex”) who found net positive reactions after releasing full versions of demos that went viral.
However, most artists riding the demo train received far more backlash than support come time for the full release. Unfortunately, I’ve seen that many singer-songwriters have not yet learned from the mistakes of their peers.
Recently, a new demo has been frequently appearing on my FYP from Chloe Slater (@chloeslater333 on TikTok). Slater first released a clip of the unnamed song in October 2023, using a caption to connect it to “Ganni girls,” a subculture that spread across the app around the same time.
Since then, Slater has posted 10 other promotional videos using the same demo clip without ever hinting at a release date. Slater changes her captions to drum up buzz from other trending topics including the viral film “Saltburn” and the recent “I think I like this little life” trend.
Slater’s videos have received varying levels of engagement, but her replies to commenters asking for the release are always present yet vague.
“Just need y’all to use my sound,” she wrote in a comment reply on Dec. 18. “Can’t wait to release it,” she followed up to another comment on Dec. 28.
At the beginning of January, viewer Eden Vernalis (@edenvernalis on TikTok) confronted her directly: “You are losing out on so many streams.” They continued, “You don’t know if the algorithm will bring all of us back.”
Vernalis summarizes the dangers this trend poses to the creators who follow it. Any artist that prioritizes viral sounds over full-fledged songs is only hurting their career.
From these stories, a simple lesson emerges: if you attract new fans only to make them wait, you’ll end up with more critics than supporters on release day.