TikTok absolutely helped make Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road’, but it was a (seemingly endless) series of remixes and collaborations (seeing the song morph into multiple iterations like a mogwai fed after midnight and then thrown in a swimming pool) that kept it in the charts and all over DSPs for the majority of the year.

Following the “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” lessons learned here – and with a keen eye on ensuring he does not go down in history as a one-hit wonder – he is planning a lot (and we mean a LOT) of remixes for his ‘Panini’ single (the one with an interpolation of Nirvana’s ‘In Bloom’).

“PANINI REMIX 1 OF 25 TONIGHT!” he tweeted to announce the beginning of this Content Avalanche, the first fruits following soon after with the arrival of a version of the track featuring rap star DaBaby.

The song itself is not actually new, first coming out at the end of June, having been lost somewhat in the viral dust of ‘Old Town Road’; but it all shows how tracks today have to be herded through carefully plotted marketing spikes that can stretch over many months. The fact it has also just got a new (proper) video is proof of how everyone involved is taking a second swing at it.

In an age of endless distractions on DSPs (not just songs, but also podcasts), acts and labels have to find a series of new ways to draw consumers back to songs. We can only presume the other 24 remixes will stretch into next year.

If dressing a song in new (remixed) cloaks worked once, then we can be sure it will be tried again and again (and again). Until it stops working. In the next issue of Sandbox, we will look in greater detail at how multiple remixes are being used to not only keep tracks in the public consciousness but also to break acts in whole new markets and work on multiple platforms.