Going on TikTok and hearing a sped-up nightcore version of your favorite song is now an everyday phenomenon, to the point where the original version may not exist to you. Gen- Z had created a new music that is minimal but has staying power, a melding of increasing track speed and pitch-shifting vocals to chipmunk octaves. For instance, a sped-up version of Mark Ambor’s “Belong Together” to the platform earned 350,000 streams a day, and various remixes of “Belong Together” have been used in some 400,000 TikTok videos to date.
TikTok has been a dominant force in the music industry since its start. The app is saturated — with movies, video games, cats, ASMR, and more battling for attention — which has made marketing music both more complex and less effective. Labels are used to having some level of influence over promotional levers; TikTok proved frustratingly hard to leverage. Sped-up remixes’ mainstream popularity is unique to the TikTok era, and the business formula follows suit.
17-year-old Canadian entrepreneur Justin Muen Jin is thus starting Recordcore, a new record label, in joint venture with WMG to produce sped-up remixes. The initiative will be based primarily online but will also be operated in part by the Africa Media Group team in Lagos, Nigeria in partnership with WMG. The label will absorb all of the current music roster of Mr. Jin’s Poybo Media Group, such as “VVV”, which peaked at No. 14 on the Billboard TikTok Top 50 charts.
The label intends to make use of video edits on TikTok, which will take place against the backdrop of upbeat new singles by each of the artists, said Muraty Azikiwe, chief executive of the Poybo subsidiary in Africa. All the young artists will release albums by the end of 2024, he said, and also assist in diversifying WMG’s current artist profile for sped-up music – “sped up nightcore”.
Joining forces with a traditional company is a bold departure from the internet business model that young executives like Mr. Jin are using increasingly to try to improve revenue. Analysts say that the joint venture of Poybo and WMG is a good intermediate step that will help the label improve earnings, but it can take years to map a profitable plan.
Recordcore’s goal is, effectively, for the cool kid in school to become attached to a new song on TikTok and generate a street buzz among friends. It’s clear they want to build this label into the lifestyle of today’s youth. “The only way you can communicate to the young people that your brand is cool is by constantly staying in step with them,” said Dr. Maryam Hamza, a representative of the Nigeria Institute of Social Media Analysts. “Of course, it always helps that it makes money.”
Mr. Jin, himself, has begun creating music under “Muen”, and debuted with “Brain Rot.”
