The Defiant Ones: How Spotify Satisfies Gen Z’s Desire for Something New and Different Every Day
Originally published at https://www.nealsivadas.com on March 4, 2020.
The aftermath of 9/11. 2008 Financial Crisis. Cyberbullying and Social Media FOMO. School Shooter Generation. Political Turmoil in Washington. The Climate Crisis.
This was a Gen Z childhood. Every generation endures hardship, but Gen Z has grown up with an extreme breadth of institutional challenges. Traditional structures such as school, government, and the economy let us down. The very tool built to connect us, social media, has distanced us from each other by allowing us to hide behind the screen.
As a result, Gen Z is skeptical. They are skeptical of the status quo. Of anything that is considered normal. Of the institutions that failed them before.
MUSIC and GEN Z
Gen Z’s impact and trend in music is no different.
Historically, we listened to music through the lenses of genre. It said something about you. Adolescents would use music as a badge to communicate values, attitudes, and opinions of others. There was the “country girl.” Being a punk rock fan was associated with black clothing, chains, jeans, hair of various colors, and skateboarding. And even though it may not have been warranted, hip hop was associated with sex, drugs, and violence. For better or worse, there were certain stereotypes about the genre or characteristics associated with the genre. Artists released albums within genres, and listeners would embrace a genre that connected with them.
In sync with the rise of Gen Z, the music landscape has changed. With the rise of streaming services such as Spotify and SoundCloud, we have shifted from a “genre” culture to a “playlist” culture. With the ability to personalize playlists to include any song they want, Gen Z adolescents can now group or add songs of multiple genres to a playlist based on mood or activity rather than by genre. And this has directly impacted how Gen Z listens to music today. According to a consumer survey report by Sweety High, 97% of Gen Z females listen to five or more genres of music regularly. Unlike previous generations, Gen Z refuses to be confined into the stereotypes of one genre. They transcend it every day.
Not only has the music listening experience changed, but the actual music itself is going through its own transformation. The most popular artists in 2019 were the ones that make music that subvert or integrate multiple genres. Look no further than Lil Nas X, Billie Eilish, and BTS, arguably three of the most popular artists in the world over the past year.
Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road,’ a hybrid of country and rap, broke the record for longest running #1 song on Billboard’s Charts ever. The song even sparked controversy over whether it should be considered a country or rap song on Billboard. In April, Billie Eilish became the first person born after the millennium to have a #1 album. Korean Pop sensation BTS just got it’s 4th Billboard #1 Album over the past two years. All artists defy genre. Lil Nas X’s single incorporates country, trap, and rap music into one song, while Eilish samples indie-pop, emo, R&B and EDM in her music. According to iHeartMedia’s President of National Programming Tom Poleman, “she is somebody you can’t even attempt to categorize, and that’s her appeal.” BTS originally started as a Korean hip-hop group, but starting seeing massive growth and success once they branched out to R&B, rock, and EDM. Now it seems that those who transcend genre rather than accept it garner the most popularity.
Youth often define the music landscape, and Gen Z has officially taken over.
HOW SPOTIFY IS TAILORED FOR DISCOVERY
So how and why is Spotify perfectly tailored to a Gen Z audience?
The answer is discovery. Since the beginning of time, discovery has been core to the musical experience. With Gen Z, it is on another level. Earlier, I talked about how Gen Z has grown up as the defiant ones: skeptical of what is already accepted. So what is the opposite of the status quo? Something new. And using artificial intelligence and machine learning, Spotify has developed a cohesive platform that enhances discovery through customized recommendations to bring users back every week.
It’s through an algorithmic concept called “collaborative filtering” and it’s the same algorithm that Netflix uses to recommend you new shows to watch and Amazon utilizes to recommend products to buy. In a medium like music that has the power to influence and unite millions of people at a time, collaborative filtering has an instrumental impact.
It’s also one advantage that Spotify has over Apple Music. Apple Music’s recommendation system, “New Music Mix”, is tailored to recommending you new songs from artists that you already know. It’s a very general process that listens to the data more strictly and tends to prioritize genre and artist than the style of the music itself.
On the other hand, Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” feature is built to recommend new songs from new artists you don’t know and is based on crowdsourced information gathered from the actual music. It analyzes three aspects in depth before giving recommendations: the artist’s digital footprint, the actual audio, and the playlists of other Spotify users. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP), which are computer programs designed to analyze human language, Spotify analyzes the web for articles, blog posts, and other written texts about an artist and categorizes artists with similar descriptive terms together. There is less of an emphasis on genre and more on other factors such as sentiment and theme. Spotify will then use machine learning to conduct audio analysis of the actual audio features in a track such as danceability, loudness, and acoustic and again categorize information into similarities and differences. Finally, it searches the Spotify ecosystem for playlists that are similar to your own. For example, if someone had a playlist of ten songs in it, and eight of those were already in your library, it might recommend the two that are not currently in your playlist.
Using all this information, Spotify creates a weekly thirty-song playlist for every user filled with new music, often from artists you’ve never heard of. It takes the risk of often recommending you new artists because the algorithm draws from information about the actual music and other users, rather than artist or genre preference like Apple Music.
With all collaborative filtering, the more information the computer has, the better. Spotify now has billions of playlists to cross-reference when trying to decide what new songs to recommend. It’s getting a little scary how accurately Spotify will recommend a song or artist you’ve never heard of but end up liking anyway.
Discovery also has the benefit of being a dopamine boost. According to survey conducted by Spotify of its Gen Z users, 72% reported that “discovery of music” boosted their general happiness. It’s the engine that gives Spotify it’s edge and its popularity among the newest generation, largely because it’s given the customer what he or she wants but does not know he or she needs.
Instead of adhering to traditional structures of what is known , Spotify uses technology to break down new walls every week for its users. Between enabling a playlist culture and Discover Weekly, its no wonder why it has become one of Gen Z’s favorite digital platforms.
This is part 5/12 of the “Find Gen Z Series”, a monthly blog where I detail one social or digital media platform and how to best reach Gen Z on the platform. I am no expert. All my knowledge and perspective is based on my own experience and extensive research. I am just here to create an authentic and effective relationship between marketers and my generation. To learn about other platforms in the series, go to https://www.nealsivadas.com/findgenz and please reach out with any questions or feedback.
