Phantogram Is Glad the Band Started Before TikTok Changed Music Discovery

Sarah Barthel of Phantogram is glad the band got its start before short-form video apps became the de facto route to break new music.

“It’s really hard for me to understand TikTok,” she tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast ahead of a headlining tour supporting the album Memory of a Day that runs through Feb. 28 in Los Angeles. 

Formed in 2007 in upstate New York, Phantogram began building a career at a time when social media was in its infancy, the iPhone was less than a year old and album sales hadn’t yet cratered. “We toured around the U.S. [playing] in front of five people, handing out burned CDs and hoping that they weren’t going to use them as coasters,” says Barthel. “I don’t know what you do now. It’s such a different beast that I am so grateful I that we didn’t start now, because it’s really hard to understand. Everything has kind of just flipped upside down in so many ways, and trying to grab a hold of that can be really overwhelming.”

But Phantogram is willing to adapt. Memory of a Day marks the first time the band hasn’t talked about making a long-form music video, says bandmate Josh Carter, and has discussed embracing short-form video, “but making it more artistic. I think that we can really do some cool s–t together. We just like put our heads together and come up with ways of making those 30-second segments tell a story and put them together.”

Barthel agrees. “I think there’s other ways to be to be creative visually than throwing all of your money into one music video,” she says. “I feel like it doesn’t really do the same thing it used to do. It’s so different now. There’s a lot of different avenues to use. Use visual concepts with people’s tiny little attention spans.”

Listen to the entire, wide-ranging interview with Sarah and Josh from Phantogram using the embedded Spotify player below, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Podbean or Everand.