She's on stage in an industrial warehouse in Glasgow, Scotland, on a Monday night in early 2024, but it could as easily be a 1930s jazz club. A double bass player and drummer are riffing in the shadows, while in the warm haze of diffused lights, the singer's elegant and melancholic voice washes over a crowd of girls with bows in their hair.

This is exactly the kind of show I frequently attend – a female singer-songwriter, an audience of enraptured women. But Laufey (pronounced lay-vay) is a very different type of musician, a kind I've never seen before and might not have if it weren't for TikTok.

Now 24 and newly anointed a Grammy winner, the Icelandic-Chinese composer/singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist has said in interviews that she's as much influenced by Chopin, Liszt, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald as she is Taylor Swift. Her musical career has taken her from performing as a soloist on cello with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra at 15 through to graduating Berklee College of Music in Boston, to now, when you have to beg, borrow or steal if you hope to score a ticket to her sold-out tour (I only did the first two).

By the time I see Laufey, her elegant, velveteen voice warming up that drafty warehouse, I've been on an entire sonic journey on TikTok and across the internet, discovering artists I never knew existed and signing on as a member of the Laufey fanclub (or Lauvers, as we're know).

The young TikTok star is fresh from performing at the Grammys a week prior – but the audience here, on the second night of her first European tour, lives for the Laufey they see on the small screen in their pockets, rather than the one on a primetime broadcast. She might be a classically trained musician known to the Recording Academy for her jazz-inflected sound, but to her fans, she's Laufey who runs a bookclub on Instagram and Laufey who participates in the same TikTok trends they do. They stood outside in wintry rain and hail to finally see her up close. On stage, Laufey praises the crowd's resilience: "I was getting DMs from you guys, saying 'Let me in.'" 

As with many of her Gen Z contemporaries, Laufey's success has come at least in part by way of TikTok. The China-owned platform, which has over 1 billion users worldwide and almost 170 million active users in the US alone, is arguably the most influential destination right now for rising musical superstars to get discovered (the others being platforms like Spotify and Soundcloud) by labels and by fans. 

"That's the beauty of the TikTok experience – that you can be an emerging artist who comes up there," says Lisa Skeppner, music partnerships manager at TikTok. "You post five videos and your sixth really connects and it goes viral."

For us, the listeners, it's a chance to have our minds opened to music that might never have otherwise come our way and an opportunity to appreciate the creativity, skill and expertise that goes into making that music.

TikTok has long been understood as a viral hitmaker, but artists, producers and tastemakers, often armed with little more than a smartphone, a ring light and a mic, have also turned it into a hub of creativity. It's become a venue for collaboration with their fans and other artists. It's a sanctuary where diverse talent can showcase everything they're capable of on their terms, making connections and building communities from the relative safety of their bedrooms. For some, it's paved the way to life-changing record deals, while for others, TikTok is a way to bypass industry gatekeepers who don't believe in them or have held them back. 

There's room for everyone to thrive. Whether you play the church organ or make beats from household objects, it's a place to find inspiration, collaborators and audiences. If you're really fortunate, TikTok can catapult you onto the Coachella lineup, Grammy stage or Barbie soundtrack – or, if you're Ice Spice, all three.