The rise of short-form video as a vessel for music discovery brought the logic of streambait to a new extreme. It was no longer about grabbing the listener in the first thirty seconds, but the first three-to-five seconds. The chorus or some ultra-hooky bit needed to hit the app-swiper immediately. Shortly after first joining the app, a video barged its way onto my “For You Page,” wherein a self-appointed TikTok-for-musicians expert explained that in order to go viral on the platform, a song needed not only an immediate hook, but “re-engagement triggers” every few seconds.
