You post a photo of your dinner. Instagram suggests a song to go with it: “Higher” by Creed. You post your cat. “Higher” by Creed. A sunset, a coffee, a screenshot of a group chat. Instagram, with the confidence of a man at karaoke, suggests “Higher” by Creed.
If this has been happening to you, you are not imagining it, and Creed is not paying for it. Meta has now confirmed that Instagram was recommending the 1999 rock anthem as a Stories soundtrack to far more people than it should have. “We looked into this and found that this song is being recommended to more people than intended,” a spokesperson told CNN. “We’re continuing to investigate.”
Even the company was not immune. “That song is always recommended to me too!” the same spokesperson said.
The short version
- The glitch: Instagram kept suggesting Creed’s “Higher” as music for Stories, no matter what people posted
- Meta’s statement: the song was “recommended to more people than intended,” and engineers are working on a fix
- Not a paid promotion: there is no sign Creed or its label paid for placement
- Not a bug: Soulja Boy’s “Turn My Swag On,” which many users also noticed, really is popular on Instagram, Meta says
- Still unknown: what actually caused it, and when the fix ships
How long this has been going on
Users started noticing the pattern in August, according to Guitar Player, and the first theories were exactly what you would expect. “I can’t prove it but pretty sure Creed is paying META to suggest their song ‘Higher’ on all Instagram Stories,” one person wrote on X.
By late September it had turned into a shared joke. “Posted on instagram about how instagram always tries to make me add Higher by Creed to my stories and it turns out it’s happening to other people,” another user wrote. “I feel like I’m uncovering a big conspiracy.” Someone else said Instagram “really wanted me to add higher by creed to the picture of caesar salad I posted.”
CNN spoke to Pamela Ross, a communications specialist, who summed up the experience neatly. “Anytime I posted anything on my Instagram story, like a dinner plate or my cat or whatever, every time it recommended adding ‘Higher’ by Creed,” she said. “I’m not following Creed, I’m not listening to Creed. Like what millennial was in charge of this decision?”
How Instagram is supposed to pick your song
When you add music to a Story, Instagram offers a short list of suggestions before you search. Those are meant to be personal. Instagram’s music recommendations are not built like Spotify’s, which lean heavily on what you stream. Instead, Instagram uses your behavior on Instagram.
The signals include the songs you have chosen in the past, the Reels you watch, the posts you like, save and share, and the accounts you follow. Reporting on the glitch also says the system looks at the visual content of the post itself, so a beach photo might pull a different list than a gym selfie. Popularity matters too. When lots of creators use the same track, it gets more exposure, which leads to more people using it.
That is why the Creed suggestion felt so wrong. It appeared for people who had never touched rock music on the app, attached to photos that had nothing in common. It was ignoring every personal signal at once.
So what went wrong?
Meta has not said, and anyone who tells you the exact cause is guessing. But this kind of failure is familiar to anyone who has worked on recommendation systems, and there are a few common shapes it tends to take.
| Possible cause | How it would look | Fits the Creed case? |
|---|---|---|
| A bad default | When the system is unsure, it falls back to one track, and that track is shown to huge numbers of people | Plausible. It appeared regardless of the post |
| An overweighted signal | One input, like a boost for a catalog or campaign, is set far too high | Plausible. Meta’s wording suggests a reach problem |
| A feedback loop | A song is suggested, some people accept it, the popularity signal rises, and it gets suggested even more | Likely made it worse once it started |
| Paid placement | A label pays for promotion | No evidence, and Meta calls it unintended |
Meta’s phrasing is a small clue. “Recommended to more people than intended” describes a reach problem, not a quality problem. It suggests the song was in the pool for a reason, perhaps because it really does suit certain kinds of posts, but something let it escape far beyond the audience it was supposed to reach. A feedback loop would explain why it got worse over two months rather than better. Every time someone shrugged and added “Higher” to a Story, they were telling the system it was a good suggestion.
This is also not the first time Instagram’s choices about what to show have backfired in the Stories tray. Just in the last few weeks, users pushed back when a new Stories effect started pixelating partners in soft launch posts. If you are tired of the algorithm deciding things for you more broadly, there is an off switch for the feed, though it resets every time you close the app.
The Soulja Boy exception
Creed was not the only song people noticed. Users also reported seeing Soulja Boy’s “Turn My Swag On” again and again. Meta drew a clear line between the two. “The Soulja Boy song being recommended is not a bug, and it is actually popular on IG!” the spokesperson told CNN.
That distinction is worth noticing. From the user’s side, both songs looked identical: a track you did not ask for, appearing far more often than seems natural. From inside Meta, one is the system working and the other is the system broken. Without the company’s own data, there is no way for users to tell the difference, which is one of the more uncomfortable truths about living inside a recommendation feed.
Creed, of all bands
Part of why this caught on is the band itself. “Higher” was the lead single from Creed’s second album, Human Clay, which went on to sell in enormous numbers, and the song peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2000. Creed spent years as a punchline as well as a hitmaker, which makes the idea of a secret Meta promotion deal irresistibly funny.
The timing also fits a genuine revival. Creed returned to touring in 2024 after more than a decade off the stage, has hosted its Summer of ’99 and Beyond cruise, and enjoyed a burst of attention when the Texas Rangers adopted “Higher” as an unofficial anthem during their 2023 World Series run. Plenty of people really are listening to Creed again. Just not as many as Instagram thought.
What you can do in the meantime
There is no setting to block a specific song from suggestions. The suggestions are only a starting point, though. You can tap the search bar in the music sticker and pick anything, or ignore the music sticker entirely. If you keep choosing other tracks, those choices should feed back into what Instagram suggests to you, once whatever is boosting Creed has been fixed. And if you have been here since the early days, it is a good moment to remember that Stories launched on Instagram in August 2016 without any music at all.
The bottom line
Nobody bought Creed a spot in your Stories. A recommendation system tripped over itself, pushed one song to far more people than it was ever meant to reach, and probably reinforced its own mistake each time someone accepted the suggestion. Meta has admitted it, has engineers working on a fix and has not said when it will land. Until then, if Instagram asks whether you want to take your cat photo higher, you are allowed to say no.
Sources and further reading
- UNILAD Tech: Instagram apologizes after algorithm becomes ‘obsessed’ with 1999 rock song
- Billboard: Instagram admits it’s been suggesting Creed’s ‘Higher’ to more people than intended
- Consequence: Instagram apologizes for repeatedly suggesting Creed’s ‘Higher’
- Guitar Player: Instagram admits a glitch keeps pushing Creed’s ‘Higher’
- The Washington Times: Instagram blames glitch for flood of Creed song suggestions
About this article: GeekBlog covers U.S. technology news, AI, phones, smartwatches and gaming. Every story is written and checked under our Editorial Policy. Spotted a mistake or have a story tip? Contact our editors.
