Instagram will let users endlessly swap the audio on old posts

NewsCloseNewsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All NewsReportCloseReportPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All ReportTechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechInstagram will let users endlessly swap the audio on old postsThe recent slew of new creator-focused features on Instagram make sense for creators, but hardly anyone else.The recent slew of new creator-focused features on Instagram make sense for creators, but hardly anyone else.by Mia SatoCloseMia SatoFeatures Writer, The VergePosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Mia SatoJul 21, 2026, 4:15 PM UTCLinkShareGiftImage: The VergeMia SatoCloseMia SatoPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Mia Sato is features writer with five years of experience covering the companies that shape technology and the people who use their tools.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.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.“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.”Image: InstagramWhen 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.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.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 tren