TikTok and YouTube could fill a gap for musicians as space shrinks on late-night TV

FastCompany: When CBS ended The Late Show With Stephen Colbert earlier this year, it also shuttered the program’s robust music offerings—a blow for artists whose television platform was already dwindling. Performing on late-night has historically been a unique avenue for musicians hoping to access new audiences—think of a rising Chappell Roan on The Late Show or The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. But when James Corden left CBS’s The Late Late Show in 2023, his program—and its coveted performance space—was never revived. NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers has cut back on live music, while ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! reduced performances to twice a week.

As it stands, only NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon consistently books live performances. Emerging artists still see incredible value in these performances—and are hopeful that nascent online programming will offer an alternative. Breaking through on late-night March 3, 2014, was the day that changed everything for the rock band Future Islands . The synth-pop group was a stalwart of America’s underground music scene due in no small part to its charismatic front man, Samuel T. Herring, and his idiosyncratic voice, somewhere between Tom Waits and Rammstein’s Till Lindemann.

That day, they performed on Late Show with David Letterman, and the host was transfixed. “I’ll take all of that you got!” Letterman cheered, and the DIY band was cast into true virality. “At the time that we played Letterman, we were in a transitory period for the band,” said the bassist, William Cashion. They’d signed to the larger indie label 4AD Records, hired management, and gotten a promise of a late-night TV spot, but never thought it would pan out. “Our team, they told us, ‘It’ll be good for your fans and your friends and family, but it’s not really going to move the needle.

These things don’t really do what they used to,'” he recalls. But that wasn’t the case. “All the festivals that initially turned us down all of a sudden wanted us to come play. Everything kind of shifted after that moment,” he said. “It was definitely a huge turning point and gave the band much greater exposure.” New media offers an alternative place for discovery A dearth of late-night spots particularly affects independent acts—the kind that could really benefit from the exposure. Representatives for CBS, NBC and ABC did not return The Associated Press’s requests for comment.

Chloë Walsh, cofounder of The Oriel, a publicity firm, points to the music bookers behind the scenes. “Of course, they have to book all the biggest things in the world, but they also have things that they want to champion,” she says. Fewer slots means developing artists are competing with big names for dwindling opportunities. But there are other avenues to discovery. “We’re kind of an anomaly in the way that our song and that performance took off,” says Cashion of Future Islands. “But we’ve seen other bands have TikTok viral hits and stuff like that.” There are many examples of artists cracking the code online.

The singer-songwriter Gigi Perez’s career was launched with the TikTok smash “Sailor Song,” as was Malcolm Todd’s with a few viral hits, landing him a major label deal with Columbia Records. The indie band Beach Bunny saw their punky-pop go viral with “Prom Queen” just ahead of the pandemic, leading to performances on Kimmel and Fallon. Even legacy artists are experiencing second winds of music discovery. Weezer’s 2010s power-pop track “Go Away,” featuring Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino, recently made the rounds on TikTok and became a top song for both on Spotify.

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The article highlights a significant shift in how musicians promote their work, which is crucial for brand strategy professionals in the music industry, while also presenting a moderately novel perspective on the evolving media landscape.