In the TikTok era that we currently live in, you cannot escape from the constant flooding of media and content via the for you page. With this, comes the increased rate and speed of information sent to users. As time goes on and the attention span of users falters away, so does the quality of the content that is being spat out by content creators. But this content is not limited to your favorite influencers – it also goes for your favorite musical artists.
A side effect of this that I see frequently increasing on TikTok and on social media in general, is the altering up of songs that are currently trending. What I mean is labels dropping songs that are slowed down or sped up, based on what users have made a trend. If a sped-up version of a new song is trending on TikTok, the chances are that within the week, the artists’ record label will release a sped-up version of the song on streaming services.
What usually happens is that the sped-up version will spread like wildfire more than the original version does. Before listeners can hear the original version of the song, they are exposed and enjoy the altered version of the song. Because of this, artists feel inclined to feature a sped-up version of their song, since hey, everyone enjoyed that version. But, doesn’t this just tarnish the entire principle of quality songwriting and quality song production?
I started realizing the true magnitude of this issue when Lil Yachty appeared on ‘A Safe Place’ podcast, where he told the tale of his experience with his songs being sped up. After discussing that the quality of music has been going downhill for a while now, he tells us that his label released sped-up versions of his latest single “A Cold Sunday” without his permission.
“I was so embarassed.”
Lil Yachty noted on ‘A Safe Place’ Podcast.
“I was making fun of people, and I was one of the people they did it to.” Yachty said. He quickly reached out to his label and made it extremely clear that he did not want this happening to his songs.
He says it better than I will, so I’ll let you read his reaction here: https://www.instagram.com/p/C5Vvv5IuCx8/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
It’s clear that the intention of putting sped-up versions of songs is a money grab. But what does this mean for the quality of music in the future, to Lil Yachty’s point?
TikTok has completely altered the way that artists promote their music, and just generally produce their music. The creation of music in recent years includes one standard: was this a song that was simply made to trend on TikTok? And the answer is yes, some songs feel that they were created for this very purpose.
There is not a clear-cut way to fix this problem. TikTok is one of the most popular social media applications on the internet right now, and the damage it has created will probably not be reversed.
But for now, all I can say is to consider Lil Yachty’s words: “STOP DA LAME LABEL SH*T”.