Musicking TikTok

This ethnographic work about TikTok''s musicking in a glocal (Austrian) context complements and build upon ethnomusicological assumptions, theories, and methods for the study of musical practices in digital spaces.

An overview of elements that make up TikTok''s interface as well as the technical-performative possibilities that it allows, this book introduces a general categorization of existing performance types and how TikTokers appropriate the platform to make their music. It illustrates how some TikTokers became aware of and began using TikTok, and it reviews some of the different strategies TikTokers apply to learn how to use the application and successfully develop their performances. The author explores how performers move from being “ordinary users” to becoming TikTokers, developing and performing an identity he calls TikTok Persona. Moreover, the author discusses how some TikTok practices can and have occurred across multiple, interconnected platforms, and he examines how localities are articulated and negotiated in these contexts.

The author argues for an understanding of musicking as a multimedia practice that different actors create and experience individually in everyday synchronous and asynchronous, physical and digital situations. The so-called TikTokers, the author demonstrates, create a sense of identity and community through their performances. This study suggests that a digital performance can be, aside from a representation of reality, an integral part of it, serving as a fundamental space for constructing and performing identity.