Instagram will let users endlessly swap the audio on old posts
Instagram will let users endlessly swap the audio on old posts
Instagram 将允许用户无限次更换旧帖子的音频
The recent slew of new creator-focused features on Instagram make sense for creators, but hardly anyone else. Instagram 最近推出的一系列以创作者为中心的新功能，对创作者来说很有意义，但对其他人而言却几乎毫无用处。
There’s a symbiotic — and sometimes frustrating — relationship between social media sites and the creators that depend on them. Platforms need influencers’ and creators’ content to keep consumers on their apps; the creators, in turn, need to be able to reach those audiences to justify creating their content in the first place. Creators want a seamless way to make and disseminate their content while being able to make money; audiences want a bottomless feed of entertaining things to look at. And platforms need to keep both parties relatively happy. 社交媒体网站与依赖它们的创作者之间存在着一种共生——有时甚至是令人沮丧的——关系。平台需要网红和创作者的内容来留住用户；而创作者则需要触达这些受众，才能证明其创作内容的价值。创作者希望有一种无缝的方式来制作和传播内容，同时能够赚取收入；受众则希望拥有源源不断的娱乐内容。平台需要让双方都保持相对满意。
Over the last few months, Instagram has added a slew of features that are helpful for creators, but that might seem slightly bewildering to everyone else. In June, the company announced it would allow users to reorder the posts on their profile grid, shuffling up chronologically arranged static posts. Instagram followed that up with the ability to add individual captions to each slide in a photo set. And today, the company said it will allow users to replace the audio track in previously posted photos and videos with different music, without having to reupload the post with a new song. It’s a feature that regular Instagram users likely won’t find much use in. 在过去的几个月里，Instagram 增加了一系列对创作者有帮助的功能，但对其他人来说可能显得有些令人困惑。6 月，该公司宣布允许用户重新排列个人资料网格中的帖子，打乱按时间顺序排列的静态内容。随后，Instagram 又推出了为照片集中的每一张幻灯片添加独立说明的功能。今天，该公司表示将允许用户替换之前发布的照片和视频中的音轨，无需重新上传帖子即可更换音乐。对于普通 Instagram 用户来说，这个功能可能没什么用处。
“Creators put a lot of thought and care into their posts, but that doesn’t mean they should be locked into every decision they made at the moment they hit publish,” Jimmy O’Keefe, head of creator product marketing at Instagram, said in an emailed statement. “We’ve been building toward this idea that your content should be able to grow and change with you — whether that’s reordering your grid, updating a caption, or now swapping out the music on a post. Replace Audio is the latest step in that direction.” “创作者在帖子中投入了大量的心血，但这并不意味着他们必须被发布那一刻所做的每一个决定所束缚，”Instagram 创作者产品营销主管 Jimmy O’Keefe 在一份电子邮件声明中表示。“我们一直致力于实现这样一个理念：你的内容应该能够随着你的成长而改变——无论是重新排列网格、更新说明，还是现在更换帖子中的音乐。‘替换音频’（Replace Audio）正是朝着这个方向迈出的最新一步。”
When asked whether updating the audio would give content creators an algorithmic boost, O’Keefe told The Verge in an email that it wouldn’t, but that creators will be able to swap the audio track an unlimited number of times without losing the likes, comments, and shares that they’ve so far amassed. In effect, it gives them a way to retroactively tweak existing content to the viral sounds of any given moment. It also means that audiences may start seeing videos they could have sworn had a different soundtrack previously. 当被问及更新音频是否会为内容创作者带来算法加成时，O’Keefe 在邮件中告诉 The Verge，这不会带来加成，但创作者可以无限次更换音轨，而不会丢失他们迄今为止积累的点赞、评论和分享。实际上，这为他们提供了一种追溯性调整现有内容的方法，使其能够适配当下流行的音频。这也意味着，观众可能会开始看到那些他们确信之前配乐不同的视频。
There are two ways of understanding this series of new features. One is that Instagram is making a new pitch to creators, hoping these small but potentially powerful tweaks will entice them to post on Instagram over its competitor, TikTok. The knock-on effect is that it feels more and more like the platform is tipping in the direction of creators rather than casual users. 理解这一系列新功能有两种方式。一种是 Instagram 正在向创作者抛出橄榄枝，希望这些微小但可能强大的调整能吸引他们选择在 Instagram 而非竞争对手 TikTok 上发布内容。其连锁反应是，这个平台给人的感觉越来越倾向于创作者，而非普通用户。
For the average Instagram user, the idea of replacing last year’s song of the summer with this year’s hit is perplexing; why would you update a post from a year ago to retroactively make it fit current trends? But the feature is intriguing if you’re a content creator or an advertiser: It opens up the possibility that one piece of content can be infinitely recycled. A post that a creator was paid to add a certain song to can be updated annually with a new song, as long as the visual content itself isn’t too dated; a brand can reheat its viral post from two years ago with a trendier audio track rather than reshoot or reupload a new clip. A dancer could A/B test the same clip, but set it to a different song each week. Content becomes less a snapshot in time than an ever-evolving — and ever-monetizable — vehicle for virality. 对于普通 Instagram 用户来说，用今年的热门歌曲替换去年的夏日金曲令人费解；为什么要更新一年前的帖子来追赶当前的潮流呢？但如果你是内容创作者或广告商，这个功能就很有趣了：它开启了内容无限循环利用的可能性。创作者可以每年用新歌更新那些曾被付费植入特定歌曲的帖子，只要视觉内容本身不过时；品牌方可以用更流行的音轨“翻新”两年前的爆款帖子，而无需重新拍摄或上传新视频。舞者可以对同一段视频进行 A/B 测试，每周配上不同的音乐。内容不再是时间的快照，而是一个不断演变、且不断可变现的病毒式传播载体。