James Blake reveals the pitfalls of TikTok and the viral music mindset

Thanks to technology, the world is rapidly changing, and the music industry has certainly been very prone to the effects of these advancements. Now James Blake has weighed on how this evolution impacts the artists and the negative aspects of the social media era.

The battle between the more traditional institutions of the music industry and the new platforms and technology hit a major roadblock in recent weeks as Universal Music Group made the radical decision to pull its artist’s catalogs from TikTok. While the evolving aspects of streaming, social media, and artificial intelligence are certainly making headlines, James Blake is one of the many artists speaking out about how the changes affect the musicians themselves. Taking to social media, Blake elaborated on comments regarding his viral Godspeed cover alongside Frank Ocean. Expanding upon the issue at hand, he challenges the perception of ‘going viral’ along with the outside work necessary to build a stable career and income.

Something I keep seeing is ‘if you’re lucky enough to go viral, just use the exposure to generate income some other way’. Musicians should be able to generate income via their music.

Do you want good music or do you want what you paid for?

— James Blake (@jamesblake) March 3, 2024

Continuing to discuss the matter, James Blake elaborates on how streaming platforms continue to diminish the amount they pay out to artists while labels continue to earn a larger cut. This model, matched with the ease of access to songs, whether it be via TikTok or Spotify, led Blake to state, ‘The brainwashing worked and now people think music is free.’ While he has received some pushback for some of these comments, especially after having delivered an AI-created album back in 2022, he does note that he is working to craft platforms that allow the creation of music while properly paying the artists behind the original productions. He sums up much of his argument by arguing that these platforms are now working to prepare listeners for AI-generated music, thus removing the need to pay artists at all.

And by the way, since it’s cheaper to produce fast, synthetic music to drop on streaming every week to capitalize on the strengths of the model, watch how the model is preparing you for AI generated music that pays musicians nothing at all.

— James Blake (@jamesblake) March 3, 2024