When the algorithm rewrites the past and turns songs into content designed to last just a few seconds.
By Gianluca Ferrari | Urban Zone | Re.Fresh Magazine
In This Article
TikTok and the new time machine of music
When the past goes viral: Kate Bush and Fleetwood Mac
Artists under pressure: when music has to please the algorithm
Sped-up versions and the never-ending editing of songs
Writing for fifteen seconds: how TikTok is changing music
Viral one-hit wonders and the rise of disposable music
The positive side of TikTok: new opportunities for artists
What kind of listeners do we want to be?
TikTok and the New Time Machine of Music
The relationship between music and TikTok is now firmly established. On one side, there are tracks deliberately designed to exploit the algorithm and achieve maximum visibility. On the other, there are songs conceived and developed specifically within the platform, with the ultimate goal of catching a trend and quickly turning into a viral phenomenon.
But these so-called disposable hits are not the only consequence of this mechanism. The trends dominating our feeds are also bringing major songs from the past back to life, allowing them to find an entirely new audience through clips lasting just a few seconds.
The logic is understandable: artists and labels are using one of the most powerful communication tools of our time to give their music as much exposure as possible. Yet the result is often paradoxical. A song can reach millions of people, become the soundtrack to thousands of videos and accumulate enormous streaming numbers without necessarily being listened to in its entirety.
Within this fast-moving environment, something unexpected is happening. TikTok is not simply accelerating the life cycle of new releases; it is also becoming a sort of uncontrolled musical time machine. The algorithm has no expiration dates. On the platform, a track released thirty years ago can have exactly the same viral potential as a single released last Friday, provided it manages to capture the mood of a trend.
When the Past Goes Viral: Kate Bush and Fleetwood Mac
Songs that had seemingly disappeared into the archives of music history are being rediscovered by younger generations, transformed into soundtracks for memes, ironic videos and introspective content, and sometimes even brought back to the top of streaming charts.
Two particularly significant examples illustrate this phenomenon.
The first is Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush, originally released in 1985 and brought back into the global spotlight in 2022 thanks to the fourth season of Stranger Things. Thirty-seven years after its release, the song found an entirely new generation of listeners, returning to the charts and becoming one of the defining musical moments of that year.
The second example is Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. In 2020, a video featuring Nathan Apodaca skateboarding down a road while drinking from a bottle of cranberry juice, with the band's iconic song playing in the background, went viral. What seemed like a simple, spontaneous moment helped bring the track back into the charts, decades after its original release.
In both cases, the success was not engineered in advance. Nobody had written those songs with a TikTok trend in mind. They were rediscovered, reinterpreted and organically embraced by the community.
That is precisely the fundamental difference between an authentic musical rediscovery and a hit designed to go viral. In the first case, the platform gives an existing work a new opportunity to reach people. In the second, the song risks being created with its expiration date already built in.
This is a form of democratised nostalgia. It is no longer just record labels or promotional campaigns deciding which songs from the past deserve to be rediscovered. Sometimes, all it takes is the unpredictable creativity of an ordinary user to bring a track back into the cultural conversation.
For established classics, this mechanism can be a wonderful opportunity. The problem begins when the same logic is applied to today's emerging music scene.
Artists Under Pressure: When Music Has to Please the Algorithm
The race for virality has also changed the everyday reality of professional musicians.
Today, releasing a single is no longer simply about completing a production and making it available on streaming platforms. It also means preparing a content strategy, constantly feeding social media, teasing snippets of the track and trying to build anticipation before the song has even been released.
Record labels increasingly expect artists to produce content continuously and demonstrate that a single has the potential to perform well on social media before investing in its promotion. In some cases, this pressure can even influence the decision to release a track in the first place.
This is not just a perception. In 2022, Halsey publicly claimed that her record label was refusing to release a new single until it had gone viral on TikTok. Her experience brought a much broader question into focus: how much power do social media platforms now have over the decisions made by the music industry?
If even an established artist has to deal with these dynamics, it is easy to imagine what happens to those with less negotiating power, fewer financial resources and an audience that is still waiting to be built.
Music risks becoming something to be tested, monitored and measured. A track is teased, its performance is monitored and its potential is judged according to the initial reaction it receives. If a snippet fails to generate enough engagement, the project may quickly lose the interest of those who are supposed to support it.
The danger is clear: a song is no longer judged solely on what it is, but on how well it performs before people have even had the chance to listen to it.
Sped-Up Versions: The Never-Ending Editing of Songs
One particularly interesting phenomenon is the rise of sped-up versions, alternative edits in which original tracks are played at a faster speed.
Artists increasingly release these versions alongside their original recordings, sometimes experimenting with changes in pitch as well. While this can certainly be a legitimate creative choice, in many cases it is also closely connected to the effectiveness of faster tracks within short-form videos and social media trends.
It is not unusual for an accelerated version to gain more exposure than the original, eventually becoming the version most frequently used in users' content.
The result is a continuous transformation of the musical product. Tracks are modified, adapted and repackaged according to what appears to perform best on the feed. Much like a product being constantly refined through market testing, a song risks losing its original identity in the pursuit of what the algorithm seems to reward.
Of course, experimenting with speed, pitch and arrangements is not inherently a problem. Music has always evolved through remixes, reinterpretations and alternative versions. The issue arises when these changes are no longer driven by a clear artistic intention, but by the need to make a track more suitable for a particular platform.
At that point, a song stops being a finished artistic work and becomes material in constant revision, reshaped according to the temporary demands of the digital environment.
Writing for Fifteen Seconds: How TikTok Is Changing Music
The problem, however, is not limited to the way music is promoted. It also concerns the way it is written.
Introductions are getting shorter, choruses arrive earlier and track lengths are increasingly influenced by the need to capture attention within the first few seconds. Songwriting itself seems to be adapting to the possibility that a short fragment might become the next viral trend.
As a result, artists can find themselves writing with those fifteen potentially viral seconds in mind, while everything surrounding that moment risks becoming secondary.
Traditional song structures, built around an introduction, a gradual development, a chorus and a conclusion, are sometimes sacrificed in favour of an immediately recognisable hook. The objective is no longer necessarily to take listeners on a musical journey, but to deliver the most effective fragment in the shortest possible time.
The song becomes bait for the feed. Some might argue that commercial music has always followed similar dynamics. Summer anthems, radio-friendly hits and one-song wonders have existed for decades. It would therefore be naive to describe this phenomenon as something entirely new.
And yet, something has changed. In the past, a song was created first and might eventually become a hit, sometimes in completely unexpected ways. Today, however, some tracks are conceived from the very beginning with that outcome in mind. Success is no longer measured exclusively by the weeks spent in the charts, but also by the first hours after release, the number of views and shares, and the speed at which a piece of content generates engagement.
Streaming platforms contribute to making this transformation even more evident. On Spotify, for example, a stream is counted after at least thirty seconds of listening. This makes the opening moments of a track particularly important: capturing someone's attention quickly can determine whether a play counts or is interrupted before reaching that threshold.
This does not mean that every artist should write shorter songs or abandon elaborate introductions. Rather, it highlights how the system creates incentives that can favour certain creative decisions over others.
Artists are not necessarily writing worse music because they lack creativity. In some cases, they are simply responding to a market that rewards speed, frequency and the ability to retain attention. Those who choose a different path may find themselves competing against a system that seems to have very little patience.
Viral One-Hit Wonders and the Rise of Disposable Music
Within this environment, an increasing number of songs seem to be designed to take off on social media before they are even given the chance to be properly heard. Tracks that embrace the language of online trends, borrow sounds that are already familiar to audiences and aim to become the soundtrack to the next viral phenomenon.
A recent example is Non mi innamorerò by Pucho, a 22-year-old rapper, featuring his partner Mia LoBosco, who performs the chorus. The track gained considerable traction on TikTok and was quickly recognised as one of the potential hits of the moment.
On social media, some users also pointed out similarities between its beat, built around Brazilian funk-inspired sounds, and the production of other tracks that had already gained popularity on the platform.
Beyond this specific release, and without rushing to judge the intentions of its creators, what deserves attention is the broader pattern: a familiar sound, an instantly catchy chorus and a track that finds its way into the feed before having the opportunity to establish a more distinctive musical identity.
La domanda non è se un artista sia astuto per aver sfruttato una tendenza. Ogni musicista ha l'ambizione legittima di raggiungere un pubblico e far conoscere il proprio lavoro. Il problema sorge quando la viralità diventa l'obiettivo principale, arrivando gradualmente a sostituire il processo creativo stesso.
Songwriting, beat production, the search for a distinctive sound and all the work required to give a track its own identity risk being pushed into the background. In their place, we may find repetitive formulas, easily adaptable snippets and content designed to be repackaged in different versions, sometimes even across multiple languages, in an attempt to reach an ever-wider audience.
At this point, an unavoidable question arises: should those who capitalise on their audience's limited attention span by offering easily consumable, viral-ready content be considered clever innovators who understand the spirit of the times, or are they contributing to the impoverishment of the musical landscape?
There is no straightforward answer. It is understandable that these phenomena are emerging at a time when attention has become an economic resource and every artist is under pressure to defend their position in an increasingly competitive market.
The real concern is that this logic could eventually become the only model available: that music might be judged exclusively on its ability to generate engagement, while anything requiring time, attention and patience is gradually regarded as less interesting.
Disposable hits have always existed. What would truly be worrying is seeing their mentality become the rule rather than the exception.
The Positive Side of TikTok: New Opportunities for Artists
It would nevertheless be unfair to portray TikTok solely as a negative force within the music industry.
The platform has given independent artists an unprecedented level of visibility, allowing musicians without the backing of a major label or an established promotional network to reach audiences across the world. It has enabled tracks recorded in a bedroom to find listeners thousands of miles away, making music promotion more accessible even to those working with limited resources.
In some cases, a single viral video can mark the beginning of an entire career, giving an emerging artist the opportunity to attract attention, build a loyal community and turn an initial moment of exposure into a more structured musical project.
TikTok has also broadened the way we discover music. A user might stumble across a track belonging to a genre they have never explored, become interested in the artist behind it and eventually discover an entire musical scene they would otherwise have never encountered.
TikTok, therefore, is neither inherently good nor bad. It is an enormous platform for exposure, capable of creating genuine opportunities while simultaneously encouraging dynamics that can be difficult to sustain. What ultimately matters is how it is used and, above all, how consciously we choose to engage with the content it puts in front of us.
What Kind of Listeners Do We Want to Be?
If the answer also depends on the kind of listeners we want to become, perhaps it is worth turning this reflection into something practical.
We can try listening to an entire album, from beginning to end, instead of stopping at the single snippet that keeps appearing on our feeds. We can follow those who write about music, select it and explore it in depth: critics, curators, independent websites and magazines that offer perspectives different from the ones automatically suggested by algorithms.
We can also rediscover a seemingly simple, yet increasingly rare habit: curiosity. Looking for an artist because someone has recommended their music, listening to an album without already knowing its most popular chorus, exploring a genre that lies outside our usual listening habits.
These are small gestures, but they represent a concrete way of rebuilding a more conscious relationship with music. A listener should not simply be a data point to be recorded, an interaction to be monetised or another view to be added to a statistic.
The true value of music cannot be reduced to the lifespan of a trend. A song can go viral overnight and disappear from collective memory a few days later. Another might take years to find its audience and continue to be listened to for generations.
Perhaps, then, the answer is not to demonise TikTok or romanticise a past in which the music industry was far from perfect. It is about reclaiming the freedom to choose what we listen to, without always allowing an algorithm to decide what deserves our attention.
Do we want to keep feeding the algorithm with another mindless swipe, or are we still willing to stop and really listen?
Music needs artists who have something to say, but it also needs listeners willing to give them the time to say it. Because a trend might last fifteen seconds. A great song, on the other hand, can last a lifetime.
Beyond the Feed: Discover New Music
If you want to go beyond disposable hits and let curiosity guide your listening, explore Victor Bendo Selection, the Spotify playlist curated by Victor Bendo Selections.
A selection of tracks worth discovering, without necessarily chasing whatever happens to be trending at the moment.
Listen on Spotify and discover your next favourite track.
