Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road’ is both a chart-topping phenomenon and a turning point for the music business. The 20-year-old rapper was a virtually unknown Tweetdecker when “Old Town Road” was embraced by TikTok influencers as the background music to something called the “Yeehaw challenge,” where users transformed into cowboys at the drop of a beat. In the three months since, their collaboration shot to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, where it has spent 12 weeks.
Source: Memes Are the New Pop Stars: How TikTok Became the Future of the Music Industry