All You Do to Me Is Tik Tok

My rough notes on the “TikTokification” of SPOTIFY, which Bloomberg says will be announced today at Spot’s “Stream On” event in Los Angeles (and online here) and which Music Ally says is much “more than just a TikTok clone.” Both good early reads, especially STUART DREDGE’s preview for Music Ally of the new vertical feed, which, he says, suddenly appeared on his Spotify mobile app Monday, two days early. No such luck for me.

1. As reported, it’s a vertical scroll of recommended content that will, apparently, auto-play as you scroll. TIKTOK is an obvious analog but far from the only one. Vertical swiping is the new black.

2. Knee-jerk first reaction. On TikTok and similar services, users swipe vertically through videos, many of which have music on them, but it’s a visual swipe, not an audio one. The image is what matters. Spotify’s feed will be the reverse: audio content that happens to have some kind of visuals. Do users want to quickly swipe through audio snippets, a few seconds, if that, of this song, a few seconds of that one, in search of one that sparks interest? Does music work like that?

3. You know who quickly skips through audio snippets a few seconds, if that, at a time? A&R people. Programmers. Critics. Lots of other people in the music biz. They can hit “skip” almost as fast a TINDER users can swipe left. Maybe they know something. Maybe that’s a perfect way for ordinary fans, too, to sample sounds in search of the one that hits them where it counts.

4. Early MTV, the MTV that everyone has nostalgia for, was literally an endless scroll of music clips with video attached. Pop fans really, really liked it. Now imagine they had the power to swipe past that JODECI video they didn’t really want to see to get to the BELL BIV DEVOE video that they did. And that they could click on the BBD video and see all the BBD videos they wanted. And related content, personalized to them. Hey, throw some 10- and 20-second news bits into that scroll and you might just have me. (Is SWAY available?)

5. What Stuart Dredge actually wrote: They’re cards, not videos. With albums, playlists, recommendations, podcasts, etc. And various choices for interaction on each one. “Spotify and TikTok don’t have the same goals,” he notes. “[TikTok] wants to keep you watching, swiping through video after video. The feed IS the experience, and it’s geared towards keeping your eyeballs on it for as long as possible... Spotify wants you to listen to the music and podcasts that it’s recommending. It wants you to tap through to listen in full, and it wants you to engage... Its success may be measured by how quickly you tap away from it, rather than how long you spend on it.”

6. OK then. Different Tiks for different Toks. Seriously, though does Sway have some time on his hands?

Plus Also Too

SOUNDCLOUD is testing a “TikTok-like feed,” too (that’s Tech Crunch’s words, not SoundCloud’s)... MAREN MORRIS, BROTHERS OSBORNE, HAYLEY WILLIAMS, BRITTANY HOWARD and JASON ISBELL are among the artists who’ll perform at a Nashville fundraiser later this month to protest Tennessee’s proposed anti-drag legislation. The “Love Rising” concert March 20 at BRIDGESTONE ARENA March will benefit several Tennessee pride organizations... ROSALÍA didn’t play Peru on her 2022 tour, so a Peruvian social media star decided to play a Rosalía concert himself for disappointed fans. IOANIS PATSIAS spent $100,000 recreating a Rosalía show, and sold out a 3,500-seat amphitheater in Lima... The 1970s late-night concert show THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL has arrived on YouTube.

Rest in Peace

BRANDY MILLER of Rochester, N.Y., the second woman to die as a result of the stampede at a GloRilla show Sunday night. Rochester officials are investigating several possible causes of the crowd crush, and whether the Main Street Armory had sufficient safety measures in place. “We are going to hold people accountable,” Mayor Malik Evans said.