Cody Jinks, Luke Combs, Willow Avalon, BJ Barham Talk TikTok Dilemma

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BJ Barham, Cody Jinks, Luke Combs, Willow Avalon


Last month, fast-rising Atlantic Records-signed country artist Willow Avalon sat down with Whiskey Riff to talk about her origin story and rapid ascent. She was living in Manhattan in December of 2022 when viral TikTok user Caleb Simpson asked if he could profile Willow’s $3,000/mo. apartment on his account. As Willow Avalon explains,

“We did this video and I expected him to take probably weeks to edit. And so I posted a funny video the next day of me and my possum Bowie. And then I woke up the next morning, and my phone was so hot you could fry an egg on it. And like, whole life 180 fully flipped, everything changed. The video of me and Bowie had gone to like 30 or 40 million overnight. And it had been tied into the algorithm with Caleb’s (video)—had been posted the same night without him telling me. So both of our videos got tied in where they were back to back.”

Willow Avalon is originally from Georgia, and is the daughter of musician Jim White. She also lived in Los Angeles before moving to New York. Though she was dabbling in music at the time, she wasn’t even looking to pursue a music career. But due to the viral videos about her possum and apartment, one manifested out of the blue, thanks to the algorithms.

“That put the one single that I had on Spotify that I self-released through DistroKid—it’s like a Garage Band unmixed unmastered demo called “Drivin'” that I made when I was 17—and that put it into a Spotify algorithm because people kept clicking on the link in my profile, so that single that had 50,000 plays on it went to like 400,000 overnight, and so it got put on all these playlist and all these things were happening.”

Avalon continues, “Then all the labels started calling. I was drunk 24/7 because I was going out to two dinners, two lunches, two brunches, and each one of them I was having a mimosa. And I eventually met Atlantic Records … and since then the internet has been a huge part of my life, which wasn’t something I never really expected or wanted and I’m still learning as I go, but it’s crazy.”

Though Willow Avalon’s story is definitely interesting, you can also understand how it could be alienating to artists who’ve been working for many years to achieve a career in country music, while Avalon achieved one by accident. A similar fate is what happened to Zach Bryan, though in a different manner.

At this point, TikTok viralty and Spotify algorithms aren’t just the new thing or the biggest thing. They might be the only thing that matters in music anymore. Either you’ve established your career before this current era and are on the right side of the algorithmic paradigm, or you’re on the outside looking in, hoping to find an avenue to at least some sort of a sustainable career where you can afford health insurance and perhaps support a family.

Cody Jinks is one of those who came up well before TikTok, and as an independent artist, had to build his career up from scratch, and catch fire off the sheer strength of his songs and albums, and a hard touring cycle to get his music to fans. He recently spoke about the TikTok effect and how it’s making “soft artists” during an interview on the Like A Farmer Podcast.

I’m old enough to say it now. God, it’s soft. It’s soft right now. It’s so soft and weak and fragile and emotional… If somebody walked up to me and was like, ‘Oh hey dude, Cody Jinks. Yeah dude, he’s that badass guy that made it on TikTok.’ Johnny Cash didn’t make it on no damn TikTok. TikTok my ass…

My ass was, get in the van and go. We cut our teeth driving around the country. I didn’t learn to play in front of 500, 5,000 or 50,000 people… I can tell you, there was one time in Madison, Wisconsin that we had as many people in the crowd as we did in the band. And we had a four piece. That’s where I came from. We earned every single bit of it.

This isn’t against anybody. The record labels have made it this way, so the artists have to follow suit because there’s nothing else the artist can do. Everybody’s hamstrung in this business. The labels have made it this way. The labels have just taken all of the balls, just completely neutered country music.

Though Cody Jinks is right about much of this, to play Devil’s Advocate, one thing TikTok and social media in general has done is it’s given artists the ability to create large followings without labels whatsoever. So then when they sign to a label like Willow Avalon or Zach Bryan, they can do so from a position of power and leverage. Like Avalon says, she had brunch, lunch, and dinner dates lined up for days. In previous eras, an artist had no power, and had to sign whatever deal a label was willing to give them.

Recently when talking with Westwood One’s Bev Rainey, Luke Combs talked about the TikTok and social media dynamic when it comes to labels. When Combs was first coming up, he received some of his first attention on Vine, which was discontinued in 2017.

It was an outlet to push my music to the fans, and obviously that’s the industry standard now, right? You can push your own music to whoever you want to push it to on your own terms. But I think sometimes you can get in trouble because now you can skip a lot of steps by doing that.

You push your music out, and maybe you’ve got one great song that you’ve written, and you live in Idaho or wherever. Then all of the sudden you’ve got record labels calling you and you’ve never even played a show before. Then you get on stage and, dude, the moment sometimes can be really big.

You can go from… there’s guys and girls now that have exploded on TikTok or Instagram or whatever and their first tour or shows they’ve ever done are in an arena opening for somebody. And they’re on a bus and it’s like, ‘You don’t have any experience doing that.’ Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I played hundreds of shows before I came to Nashville.”


This “softness” and inexperience that both Cody Jinks and Luke Combs speak about often comes across in the music, especially in the live space when you see many of these viral TikTok-originating performers in concert. Some of them seem to have a natural inclination to the stage. Some of them stare at their shoes, feel awkward in front of audiences, aren’t the strongest of singers, or seem to be matched with their band inorganically in a way that doesn’t lend to the stage chemistry a honky tonk-worn band accrues over time. That inexperience can also come out through recorded music.

Even when Florida Georgia Line was exploding in popularity during the onset of the Bro-Country era, and their song “Cruise” was setting records their booking agent and label still made them go on a club tour first just to prove they could pack houses, and so they could gain experience on the stage before being put in front of the massive crowds they would ultimately perform for. This was the standard just a few short years ago. Now that standard doesn’t exist.

One of the bands Florida Georgia Line opened for early on was North Carolina-based alt-country band American Aquarium and frontman BJ Barham.

Recently, Barham was speaking on the Stephan Hogan podcast, and explained,

What I’m building is trend-proof. What I’m building is foundational. What I’m building, I started when MySpace was popular. That faded, then it was Facebook. Then it was Instagram. Then it was TikTok. My thing has been growing … I don’t need, like whatever social media platform, great, I’ll use it to promote the shows. But I’m not basing my entire career off of clicks and likes. I’m basing my entire career on who’s gonna pay $40 to see me once a year when I roll through their town. That’s what I want.

I don’t need the streams. I need people buying physical copies of the record from the label that I own, that I put out my music on. I think every kid wants the same thing: How do I not work a straight job? How do I play music for a living, and not have to work a 9-to-5? I’m playing the long game. 20 years into my career, I own 100% of my publishing.

Though grassroots music fans and most certainly struggling artists themselves take it personal when performers can’t make a living through their music, it’s important to underscore that being a musician is an elective occupation, not matter how essential music might feel to our lives, or how driven some musicians are to pursue the craft, no matter the struggles and sacrifices they have to make.

Not everyone who wants to be a musician can be a musician. The incredible volume of songs, albums, and new artists coming online every single day is one of the reasons technology is making it harder for listeners to find the music that might most appeal to them, and artist to find the fans that can support their career at a sustainable level. This is one of the reasons algorithms are implemented by technology companies, because it’s impossible to serve the public with “last in, first out” information without drowning them in information.

So much of the sentiment on the Instagram/TikTok paradigm splits down the middle of the music industry, and is almost entirely separated by age. Older artists either look at social media slant eyed, or are doing their best with it as late adopters. For some younger performers, they don’t know a world without TikTok and Instagram, and it all comes natural and intuitive to them. Even then, the way a video about an apartment can launch a major label career seems so capricious. And to musicians who spend their time from tender ages until well after high school refining their craft, it can seem patently unfair.

But young and old, struggling and wildly successful, everyone should appreciate the finite and fulid nature of social media. As BJ Barham explained, he started on MySpace. So did Saving Country Music, and was wildly successful on the format. Then it entirely imploded, and you had to start entirely from scratch on a new format. Relying on one solitary social media format for your career is a perilous prospect, especially TikTok.

Officially, TikTok is currently banned in the United States. Congress passed legislation prohibiting the app, and President Biden signed it into law. Then after being challenged in the courts, the Supreme Court upheld it. President Trump has simply ignored enforcing the law, and instead has enacted 90-day pauses in its implementation as he attempts to use it as leverage in his China tariff negotiations. But at some point, the ban will either have to be revoked by an act of Congress, which seems unlikely or impossible, or the law must be enforced.

The Federal government is currently being sued to enact the ban, while others cite the stay on the TikTok ban as a Constitutional crisis. The reason for the ban is legitimate privacy concerns for an app essentially owned by a foreign government (China), especially one that has so much power over the American public, especially young people.

After all, it’s TikTok choosing the winners and losers in music these days more often than not, not the labels and their A&R personnel, or other talent scouts who can bring deep expertise to evaluating music and musicians that will not just do well in the short-term, but that can put together those 20 year careers, irrespective of whatever the hot social media platform happens to be, or what might replace it next.

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