How TikTok Is Making Folk Music Go Viral Again

  • Publish date: since 3 hours Reading time: 1 min read

How short video feeds revived folk music for a new generation

Artists Are Using It as a Direct Line to Listeners

Historical Songs Are Getting Second Lives

The Algorithm Does Not Care About Genre

The Artists Who Broke Through Overnight

The Platform Changed but the Music Was Always There

What This Means for Folk Music's Future

Young Listeners Are Craving Something That Sounds Handmade

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Something unexpected is happening in the algorithmic feeds of millions of young people who grew up on pop and hip hop and trap. Ancient instruments dusty ballads and songs that sound like they belong to a different century are finding entirely new audiences through short video clips and the numbers are genuinely hard to ignore. Here is how the world's most chaotic social platform ended up becoming the most unlikely champion folk music has ever had.
 

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