The music video is a visual epic, a combination of music and video. After MTV debuted in 1981, music videos became an undetachable element of the music industry. Continually, with rapidly growing internet technology, YouTube succeeded as the hub of music videos. Of course, there were differences according to era. However, they both shared the function of promoting music in the form of music videos and reviewing audiences’ reactions.
It was a coronavirus pandemic when the distinctive paradigm arose. After TikTok became the second most famous Social Network Service in the world, people in the music industry received a task to draw audiences’ interest to music with a vertical video within the length of 9 seconds.
Being in TikTok’s eco-system of an interface actively encourages its users to promptly move on to the next one if they don’t like the content that they’re watching at the moment and an elaborately calculated algorithm for generation Z’s ‘dofarming’ – modern music industry chose a strategy that utilizes the music itself as a place of engagement.
Similar to the grammar of ‘hook song’ that dominated K-pop from the late 2000s to the early 2010s, this era’s music industry induces people to think of a specific dance, movement, or situation when they hear a certain part of the song with the strongest impression, and then to voluntarily recreate it. This leads to the simultaneously changing flow of ‘getting viral’, which trend-sensitive creators and influencers always keep their eyes on, eventually deriving the general audiences’ interest in the song.
What would be the implication we could get from this cultural phenomenon, as a content creator? Firstly, concentrating on the characteristics of changed forms. Instead of horizontal videos, creating vertical and/or square videos to meet the needs of mobile-targeted content could be an idea. In company with the insight that the spectrum of creators is getting wider every day, prioritizing the convenience of process and usage on various platforms.
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