A second life: that’s how we can call the summer of ‘Makeba’, by Jain, released in 2015. The track has seen notable success in recent weeks. The reason ? A TikTok trend that brought the song published almost 10 years ago up to date. At the beginning of July (there are no more recent statistics), there were more than a million videos covering this song on the social network TikTok.
For several years now, social networks have played a central role in the virality of a song. This is what Éric Jean-Jean, host at RTL and RTL 2 and a connoisseur of the musical world, observed. “The path of the summer hit to the listener has changed, and so have our points of reference. Before, there was the hit parade, the Top 50. But today, the musical offering is immense,” notes Éric Jean-Jean.
And all this starts with young people who, now through their consumption of social networks, can make almost any song appear at the top of the charts. Recent example, the title “Je la sais” by Marseille rapper SCH. Released in 2016, the title returned to the Spotify Top 50 France at the end of July, again due to a TikTok trend. “It’s a difficult phenomenon to analyze,” concedes the radio host.
As a result, the role of radio stations and record companies in the emergence of a summer hit has changed. “It’s becoming a huge headache for the record companies. Today it is more likely that a hit will come from social networks than from record labels. Before, radio stations produced the summer hit, now they follow and are very attentive to what is happening on social networks. »
Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, TikTok or Instagram allow, with their algorithms, to discover an immense musical catalog with a temporality different from traditional channels. “By the time the music goes around the world on social media, it’s 3 clicks. The traditional time with the radio, the programmers, the record company is much longer,” observes Éric Jean-Jean.
The recipe for a summer hit is therefore changing. “The ideal was a release during the spring to broadcast on the radio before the summer. But social networks now play the role of particle accelerator and have disrupted everything,” analyzes the radio host.
From there to sealing the future of summer hits? Nothing is less sure. “There are counterexamples to all of this,” recalls Éric Jean-Jean, citing the songs “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi and “Gangnam Style” by Psy, two huge hits of the last decade. “There is no reason why the summer hit no longer has a future,” he reassures. “It’s like a cuddly toy, it reminds us of our first shovel roll, our summer at the campsite. A summer hit is nothing other than the evocation of a happy memory during the summer when our senses are in turmoil. »
It’s a song that caused a lot of reaction on social networks, particularly on Twitter and TikTok. More precisely, it is not a song, but a remix created using artificial intelligence: this sound is “Saiyan. » Originally, “Saiyan” is a song released by rappers Gazo and Heuss l’Enfoiré. But the sound was taken over by an artificial intelligence imitating Angèle’s voice. The Belgian singer was even amused by the uncanny resemblance between her own voice and the piece created by the AI. In one month, the song had just under 4 million views on YouTube and was played in some nightclubs this summer. Not bad for a song created by Lnkhey, a beatmaker unknown to the general public.
