There’s a strange thing happening in culture right now.
Music is getting shorter, blander, more interchangeable – and it’s not because musicians suddenly lost the plot. It’s because Spotify’s algorithm rewired the economics of creativity. A “stream” counts at 30 seconds. You aren’t paid more for a longer track. And so – surprise – the average song is shrinking while albums get longer, stuffed with micro-tracks designed to maximise total streams.
We’ve seen this movie before. Vinyl dictated track length. CDs dictated loudness. iPods dictated shorter titles. But Spotify? Spotify dictates how music is made. Structure, length, style, even mood. It’s algorithmic Darwinism.
And it’s not just music. It’s the film and TV industry as well since streaming came along.
The Guardian reported that Netflix increasingly commissions films engineered to appeal to the widest possible audience, resulting in generic, derivative, easy-to-follow content designed to perform well in autoplay-driven environments, rather than push creative boundaries. These “algorithm movies” lean on predictable story beats, familiar tropes, recognisable-but-not-bankable stars, and titles that literally explain the premise.
This is also happening in marketing. And that should worry us.
Marketing has fallen into the same trap
Over the last decade, marketers have quietly become platform optimisers.
Not brand builders.
Not creative thinkers.
Not storytellers.
Just really enthusiastic servants to the algorithms of ad platforms.
We optimise for CTR.
We optimise for reach.
We optimise for conversions.
We optimise for the first 3 seconds on TikTok and the first line of the LinkedIn post and the hook of the YouTube pre-roll before the Skip button appears.
And slowly – almost invisibly – marketing became shorter, noisier, and sh*tter.
Not because marketers got worse.
But because the media platforms that we distribute our marketing through changed the incentives.
If Meta says the first 1.5 seconds determines relevance? We write for 1.5 seconds.
If YouTube rewards mid-rolls at 8 minutes? Videos magically hit 8:01.
If LinkedIn boosts content that ends with a question? Suddenly everyone’s asking “Thoughts?” like an NPC.
We are now making marketing for the machine, not the buyer.
The algorithm is not the audience
Spotify’s algorithm doesn’t care about emotional resonance.
It cares about retention.
Meta’s ad platform doesn’t care whether someone loves your brand.
It cares whether they watched 50% of a video.
Search engines don’t care if your message is memorable.
They care if it satisfies a keyword query.
And marketers, being rational creatures, optimise towards the reward.
Just like musicians.
But here’s the cost:
- Brands lose distinctiveness
- Creative gets samey
- Campaigns get shorter
- Consistency gets overwritten by constant refreshes
- Marketing becomes forgettable – even when it’s performing
We’ve mistaken platform performance for persuasion.
We’ve confused “what the algorithm wants” with “what the buyer needs”.
We’ve let the medium set the message – again.
The uncomfortable truth
Great marketing has never been platform-centric.
It’s always been buyer-centric.
Buyers care if your marketing helps them, moves them, inspires them, or solves a real problem.
Just like listeners care about songs that mean something – not songs engineered to hit 31 seconds.
A better way forward
Yes, algorithms are real. Yes, you should understand how platforms work. But the best marketers use platforms as distribution, not direction.
The job is not to please the feed.
The job is to reach and resonate with humans.
So here’s my proposition; stop creating for the algorithm and start creating for the buyer.
Because the algorithm rewards what people respond to, eventually.
One things for sure though – people don’t respond to what the algorithm forces you to make.
Dear World,
Make your songs longer and your marketing more buyer-centric. Create for people.
