K-pop boy band extraordinaire BTS released a snippet of a new single on Thursday. (They dropped a new album on Friday.) The clip of the song, “On,†debuted on TikTok. But if you tried to listen to it at the very first moment it hit the app, you probably had trouble. Instead of the song you’d come to hear, you likely saw an error message that the app was unable to connect to the network. Perhaps you fell into a rabbit hole watching other TikToks and forgot all about the BTS song you came to hear. Perhaps you tweeted, angrily, about not being able to hear the song.
On Twitter, the assumption was that the BTS Army — the band’s fandom, which includes, uh, John Cena — had crashed the app with their feverish clicking. Not the most ridiculous assumption, except it doesn’t totally track, given that the rest of the app was working without a hitch. “BTS Crashed TikTok With Their New Song ‘ON,’†reads a headline from Nylon. Forbes hedged a little, claiming BTS “reportedly crashed†the app. Given the fan base’s history of crashing apps and websites, from TicketMaster to K-pop fansite Weverse, such claims may not seem outside the realm of possibility. And yet.
Not to rain on your parade, but … actually, get an umbrella; that’s exactly what I’m going to do. The problem on Thursday wasn’t caused by excited BTS fans overloading the app. Instead, it was a simple coding goof on TikTok’s side. “A link to the track needed to be updated on the backend when the song dropped in the app,†a TikTok spokesperson told Vulture. “It was not a crash.†The link was quickly fixed and is currently live for your listening pleasure. Honestly, it’s only a matter of time before BTS Army does in fact crash TikTok. Has anybody taught them the “Renegade†dance?