Mia Khalifa (song)

TikTok is a social media video app owned by the Chinese tech company ByteDance. Formed from a merger with the app Musical.ly in 2018, TikTok allows users to post short videos and use audio clips from its database, generally to make lip sync videos. Some of the audio in the database is officially licensed by the copyright holders, but users can also upload an audio clip on their own, at which point the clip becomes available to other users.[6] TikTok is particularly popular among Generation Z, defined as those born after the mid 90s and before the early 2010s.[18] The app has been compared to the defunct Vine.[6][18]

"Mia Khalifa" became ubiquitous on TikTok in late 2018 and early 2019.[18] The song became so popular, and was so closely identified with the app itself, that it spawned a call and response meme called the "#hitormiss challenge" or "#TikTokTest". To participate in the challenge, TikTok users would wander into public areas like big-box stores or schools and holler the phrase "hit or miss", hoping to elicit a response from a stranger who might complete the line by calling out "I guess they never miss, huh?" The premise of the meme was that the phrase had become so well known among TikTok users that it could serve as a sort of secret handshake or dogwhistle to find other users in the real world.[9][19]

The song demonstrated how social media, and TikTok in particular, function as important platforms for listeners to discover new music.[6][20] In this capacity, it has been identified as a predecessor to Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road", another song by a previously unknown and unsigned artist that found viral success through TikTok.[21][22][23][14] While other songs reached comparable levels of popularity on the app around the same time—including, for example, Ariana Grande's "Thank U, Next"—"Mia Khalifa" was different because its success was completely spontaneous. Grande was already a mainstream artist with major promotion and an established following, while iLoveFriday had minimal promotion and their song's unconventional style did not seem, on its face, calibrated to have broad appeal.[6]

The 15-second "hit or miss" snippet from "Mia Khalifa" was first uploaded to TikTok by a high-school age girl from South Dakota named Cheyanne Hays.[6] Then, a British TikTok user named Georgia Twinn made a highly popular video using the same clip, drawing greater attention to the song.[6][24] In October 2018, American cosplayer (known online as 'NyanNyanCosplay' or 'Kat') lip-synced the song while cosplaying as the character Nico Yazawa from the Japanese multimedia franchise Love Live![5] Kat's video was likely the catalyst that inspired the viral phenomenon around the song.[23] The video spread to YouTube, where PewDiePie—already the most popular individual YouTuber—reused her clip several times in his own videos.[6] English cosplayer Belle Delphine, who has been noted for popularizing the e-girl aesthetic online, also uploaded a notable video of her lip-syncing and dancing along to the song. The Daily Dot wrote that "Delphine's brilliant pink hair and coy personality quickly made the video a hit."[25]

Near the end of October 2018, there were more than 1.3 million different videos on TikTok using the same sample;[5] by December, there were more than 2.5 million.[9] By February 2019, at least 4 million different "Mia Khalifa" videos had been uploaded to TikTok, the original music video had been viewed more than 50 million times, and snippets from the song had been played in videos across YouTube approximately 200 million times.[6] The song also reached the number one position on Spotify's Global Viral 50 chart, a ranking of the most-streamed independent songs on the platform, and it consistently charted near the top position for several months.[18][20]

As of June 2020, TikTok videos which include "Mia Khalifa" have been viewed over 865 million times in total.[26] Videos tagged with the #hitormisschallenge hashtag had collectively accumulated 93.7 million views as of April 2019.[23] By May, videos tagged with #hitormiss had reached a total of 250 million views.[27] Newspaper columnist Calum Marsh noted the existence of an hour-long compilation of dances to "Mia Khalifa" from TikTok.[27] The song's lyrics were the 18th most-read on the site Genius in the first half of 2019, ranking ahead of "I Don't Care" by Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber, and "Wish You Were Gay" by Billie Eilish.[28]

According to an estimate made by a Pitchfork writer, iLoveFriday probably netted $150,000 worth of royalty payments from YouTube views. The group's manager, Terrance Rowe, did not confirm that figure but laughed, suggesting that the estimate was close or perhaps too low.[6]

Despite their song's breakthrough success on TikTok, iLoveFriday had not initially licensed it for use on the app and never received compensation from the company for the song.[6] However, by early 2019 they had worked out a deal with TikTok granting free use of the song in exchange for promotion of their future music. Rowe justified the group's decision by emphasizing that the opportunity for exposure would be more valuable in the long run than demanding compensation for past views.[6]

TikTok has been criticized for its royalties-payment structure. Citing iLoveFriday's situation, Cody Atkinson of Australian BMA Magazine said TikTok's payment seemed to be worse than streaming services or even busking.[29] Brett Gurewitz of the Los Angeles-based punk rock band Bad Religion criticized the company and said the situation was like "what we saw with Chuck Berry getting a Cadillac instead of royalties."[6]