Balancing Virality with Artistry: TikTok’s Musical Artists

Belmont Vision Multimedia, Zach Watkins

Alina Adams leans forward, her nose piercing reflecting sunlight as she speaks rapidly to her phone camera, while holding a guitar in her lap. 

“Just another cover of the same song you’ve probably heard on your ‘For You’ page 100 times by now. But I’ll make it worth it. I swear, OK,” she says before delivering a wispy performance of Big Thief’s “Velvet Ring,” closing her eyes as she concentrates. 

The video of this performance, pinned to the top of her TikTok profile, boasts over 10 million views. 

Adams represents a new kind of online musician, one who builds a fanbase not just through her songs but by showing her personality. As social media reshapes the road to success in the music industry, artists like Adams blaze their own trails. 

A singer-songwriter who wears her heart on her sleeve, Adams doesn’t do anything wild to get the attention of her audience. She just talks to it before she sings.  

As simple as her approach is, it works. Over 500,000 TikTok users follow her account.  

“I’ve realized people grasp onto pieces of my personality. I think it makes them realize I’m a real person and not just a gal singing on screen,” Adams said.  

She started posting her music on TikTok at the beginning of 2023, but didn’t find success until the end of the year when she posted a personal narrative-style vlog called a “Story Time.” 

“I was like, ‘well, if people just like me talking, I’ll just talk,’” she said.  

As if telling a secret, she now starts her videos with quick personal anecdotes, leaning close to the camera, usually in her Belmont dorm room. She spits out words at breakneck speed, reeling in her viewers before she starts singing, using vocal flips and a breathy technique to entrance her audience with her music.  

Because of the audience she’s found on TikTok, she’s found similar success on streaming platforms, she said. Her newest song, “i know, i know, i know,” garnered nearly two million streams on Spotify since its release last month, making it her most streamed song.  

While Adams’ personality drives engagement with her content, her music lies at the core of her success. However, some musicians on TikTok take a different route. 

Griffin Tomaino likes producing music for friends, making his own music and, of course, making content on social media.  

 Instead of posting his music on TikTok though, he posts comedic and relatable content. 

It’s a hobby that’s found him success. He gained over 350,000 followers on the platform since January of this year.  

But this didn’t happen overnight. As both a producer and artist, Tomaino had to change his approach to social media after years spent posting snippets of his songs online.  

“I always used Instagram and TikTok to promote my music, but it never really hit on its own,” Tomaino said.  

He takes an original approach to editing his videos, a method that catches the attention of his viewers. Oscillating between being comically slow or fast, he distorts the audio in an method that’s now been dubbed as the “Griffin Method” online.  

To his surprise though, online success yielded benefits beyond a larger follower count. 

Last month, he released a new song and found, due to the size of his platform, he got more interaction with his music on streaming services than with previous releases. 

“I actually ended up getting way more pre-saves than anytime I’d ever released anything. Despite my content being completely unrelated to music, just having those eyes and ears that I didn’t before allowed me to have more success with the release of the song,” Tomaino said.   

Social media success has become increasingly important for success in the music industry in recent years. Several artists such as Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo and Laufey found global success through TikTok, something labels are taking note of.  

“Sometimes labels are signing artists only once they have success on social media,” said James Elliott, Belmont’s chair of songwriting and an assistant professor of songwriting. 

This kind of self-made artist isn’t new, though, it predates even TikTok. Tomaino uses YouTuber-turned-musical-artist George Miller, known professionally by the name Joji, as an example of the kind of career he chases.  

Miller started on YouTube in 2012 under the persona, Filthy Frank, building a large following through his outlandishly comedic videos, all done while wearing a bright pink bodysuit. In 2017, though, he stopped creating comedic content to pursue a career in music. 

“That digital footprint was huge, but he was still able to use the following to fund this other creative endeavor. At this point, people don’t even remember that,” Tomaino said.  

Though over the years many artists like Joji used social media platforms as a launch pad for offline success, there are still other ways to make it as an artist beyond posting. 

 While TikTok is a viable path for many songwriters to find an audience, to some its emphasis becomes a block in the road. 

 El Schoenow, a junior songwriting major, likes anything vintage. 

Hosting an eclectic mix of knickknacks and décor, her apartment in Russell Hall has everything from a stained-glass turtle lamp to a giant poster of John Lennon, looming over her bed. 

Schoenow wants to take a more traditional approach to finding success in her career, so she feels less drawn to posting her music on social media. However, she does find herself limited as a result, she said. 

“I’ve always had a hard time making a meaningful presence in online spaces,” she said. “I think if I were to post more consistently, maybe things would look different right now.”  

Instead, Schoenow spends her time working on building up her portfolio, wanting it to represent her artistry in an accurate way, she said.  

“I want to showcase what I’m about rather than consistently posting something that I don’t necessarily like,” Schoenow said.  

Adams, too, is aware of the danger to her artistry that comes with juggling both an online persona and the duties of a musician, feeling pressure to write her music differently at times to better fit TikTok’s algorithm. However, she makes an active effort to stay true to herself in writing, she said.  

 “I’ve realized that when I write songs that I think will do good on TikTok because it’s catchy or whatever, it feels less true to myself,” Adams said. “For people who are trying to be singer-songwriters you kind of have to feel it or no one else is going to.” 

In a digital world where a scroll can make or break a musician, artists like Adams and Tomaino find a way to harmonize virality with authenticity — one post at a time.  

“The goal isn’t to be a TikTok influencer, but an artist. I’m hoping at one point I’ll be too busy to be able to post that often,” Adams said. “I love doing social media and I think it’s fun to connect with people, but I got bigger things that are the end goal.” 

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This article was written by Nolan Russell