The Grateful Dead are the latest band to officially join TikTok, with their first video appearing last week.
According to a press release, The Grateful Dead’s TikTok account “will serve as an outlet to celebrate the decades of music, generations of community, and endless array of creativity that has woven the band and its fans into every new era of the world’s counterculture and consciousness.”
The band’s first video on the platform was a 30-second compilation of archival concert footage, artwork, interviews and more from the late ’60s to their final shows in 1995.
At the beginning, an interviewer asks Jerry Garcia: “People are crazy about The Grateful Dead. How can you account for that?” with Garcia responding at the end, “What’s the question? Say it again, real slow.”
The clip is soundtracked by a remastered 1969 live recording of their song ‘St. Stephen’ at San Francisco’s Fillmore West.
@gratefuldead Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right ⚡️💀🌹
♬ St. Stephen (Live at the Fillmore West San Francisco, 1969) [2001 Remaster] – Grateful Dead
In videos posted since, there are further interview clips, snippets of tracks and live performances. There is also a video in which Garcia discusses climate change and the urgent need to act.
In addition to The Grateful Dead, other artist pages that have recently appeared on TikTok include The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.
In other news, the “iron grip” of TikTok could risk musicians losing out on royalties, according to a former tech minister.
The Conservative MP Damian Collins, the former Minister For Tech and the Digital Economy, said in March that potential changes to the app that are currently being trialed in Australia will be unhelpful for artists who have achieved particular success on the platform.
Per The Telegraph, TikTok has been carrying out a trial in Australia that limits the number of songs users can use in their videos. The move is part of an effort by TikTok to prove that music isn’t crucial to the app’s success amid clashes with record labels over royalties.
A TikTok spokesperson told The Telegraph: “Some of our community in Australia will not be able to access our full TikTok Sounds library at the moment. This will only affect certain music and is scheduled while we analyse how sounds are accessed and added to videos. We look forward to restoring our full catalogue soon.”
In addition, the spokesperson told NME that “speculation that the test is expanding to other markets is baseless”.