Wonder

Log in

Pop Music Consumption

Delivered March 29, 2020. Contributor: Methody G.

Goals

To identify the media consumption patterns for pop music listeners.

Early Findings

Pop Music Listeners Consumption Patterns

  • In 2019, people spent around 18 hours a week listening to music, with 89% of users listening to music through on-demand streaming services.
  •  52% of the 16 to 24 year olds, the biggest demographic for pop music, report using paid streaming services every month.
  • Moreover, 77% use YouTube for music video consumption each month.
  •  44% of GenZ consumers also prefer listening to music on their smartphone devices.
  • Moreover, music listeners average 5.4 hours a week listening to radio either live or on catch-up, with 29% of them listening to radio on a daily basis.
  • Spotify has become GenZ's favorite place for consuming music (61%), followed by radio (55%).
  • GenZ and Millennials prefer to buy music online while Baby Boomers still prefer owning a CD or DVD. As those are the three biggest consumers of pop music, we can assume that this translates to pop music as well.
  • According to the WSJ, "people don’t focus on genres anymore but on the artists and songs." This is even more true when considering that people listen to as much as 4 genres on a regular basis.
  • We could even see this effect in the music production as well, as a lot of pop songs have adopted hip-hop elements while hip-hop artists have started transitioning to more pop-style songs.
  • Despite that, pop songs are still the most popular choice of music, as they have completely dominated the charts at Spotify and the Billboard.

Proposed next steps:

You need to be the project owner to select a next step.
As we looked at the consumption patterns of both music listeners and pop-music listeners, we recommend continuing by examining why people like listening to pop music, i.e what are their motivations, what specifically they like, how it affects them.
We also propose looking at 2-3 challenges that new-coming pop artists face while trying to break through and gain popularity. For each challenge, we will describe what the challenge is, why artists consider it a challenge, and 1-2 ways that it can be overcome.