Trends in Music

In a Decade: The Influence of Millennials, Gen Zs, and Pop in Music Culture


December 17, 2024

Spotify's User Demographics

Did you know that Millennials and Gen Zs are the top users of Spotify? As of 2023, the main users of the streaming service are users aged 35 and below. With Gen Zs (18-24) at 26% and Millennials (25-44) at 44%. Initially, in this data the Millennials were divided between groups of 25-34 and 35-44, where the younger age bracket was at 29% (25-34) and the older age bracket was only at 16% (35-44). This difference highlights the significant popularity of Spotify among younger age groups compared to older age groups.

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The Success of Music Streaming Platforms

Music streaming services have a massive selection of licensed tracks, letting users easily find and play any song they want. This convenience is a big reason why 70% of music fans prefer streaming. Whether at home, on the go, or while doing other things, 73% of users love the smooth listening experience. Plus, 72% of users are happy with the huge music library and easy access. It's clear that streaming has changed the way we listen to and enjoy music. Source and visualization (below) was taken from Miquido, click the image or this link to learn more.

Infographic: Streaming Drives Global Music Industry to New Highs | Statista
*This visualization was edited to fit the styling of our site, but the data was from Miquido.

To highlight, the top main demographics of Spotify have increased exponentially in the past decade. With Gen Zs having a 650% increase in users, growing from 20 million to 150 million and Millennials having a 900% increase in users, growing from 18 million to 180 million from 2013 to 2023.

*Hover to view specific user data.

With Millennials and Gen Zs being the two largest user bases for Spotify, the massive increase in new listeners within these groups means their influence on which songs are streamed more on Spotify becomes even more significant. Listening patterns related to certain artists or genres of music can change based on the listening activities of these main groups of users. Some genres of music may experience sudden increases or decreases in popularity.

A 60% Decrease in Popularity for Hip-Hop/Rap Music From Gen Z's in 2023

Pop & Hip-Hop has maintained it's popularity in the past decade. With Pop being the most popular genre being listended to between Millennials and Gen Zs at 40% in 2023 and Hip-Hop/Rap at 30% from Millennials. There is however a dip in Hip-Hop/Rap popularity for Gen Zs as it is at 10% in 2023 compared to 2013 where it was at 25% alongside with Millennials.

*Hover to view age groups, percentages, and music genres. Click next to view all genres.
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*Hover to view age groups, percentages, and music genres.
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We can make assumptions such as how this could be a result of less music being released from hip-hop/rap artists who were still active in 2013 compared to 2023, or it could simply be that Gen Zs have taken a preference to other genres of music.

Pop Music Dethroned as the Most Popular Genre, What Happened in 2018?

Hip-Hop/Rap Music Reaching its Peak Popularity Within the Decade, Surpassing Pop Genre

From our comparitive analysis between the top age demographics of Spotify and determining the main genres that they listen to, we found that the overall music genre rankings consistently have Pop & Hip-Hop within the top 2 most streamed music genres in the past decade.

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*Hover to view year, genre, and rank.

This visualization displays how hip-hop/rap surpassed pop music in popularity during 2018 as popular hip-hop/rap artists such as Drake and Post Malone released new albums. Both of these artists reached the top of the rankings with their songs reaching rank 1 (God's Plan by Drake) and rank 5 (Rockstar by Post Malone feat. 21 Savage). This surge of hip-hop/rap music being released in 2018 and ranking high on the charts resulted in a higher cumulative stream count for the genre.

Resurgence of Hip-Hop/Rap Music, Conquering the Year's Charts

Similarly, in Billboard's Top 100, we found that about 1 to 3 songs ranked in the top 5 from each year are pop songs.

*Hover to view song data. Drag to view a chart on a specific year.
*Number of Streams are randomly generated by AI, but Rank # is accurate.

When specifically looking at the 2018 rankings we could see that there is an absence of big names within the pop genre. This could mean that the lack of music releases from top-performing pop artists led to the increase in popularity for hip-hop/rap music. Artists such as Taylor Swift who did not release a song or album in 2018 could account for a significant portion of lost potential listeners for pop music, making these users listen to new songs being released within the hip-hop/rap genre.

How Influential is the Pop Genre in Music Culture?

Switching from Country to Pop: An Exponential Increase in Popularity for Taylor Swift

Looking at Taylor Swift's career, she had initially started off making country music but switched genres later on: from country to pop. Earlier albums (first album 'Taylor Swift', with 40,000 sales) that had been under the country or country-pop genre had recorded low album sales on the first week of releases, but had experienced an exponential increase in albums sales (third album '1989', with 1,285,000 sales) once she had completely transitioned into pop music.

A visualization showing the trends of Taylor Swift's First week album sales throughout her career.
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*Hover to view region, country & cumulative regional appearances.
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Has Western Music Become the Standard for the World?

This map visualizes data from the yearly top 10 songs on Spotify within the past decade. These songs are mapped out to reflect on the map which regions they are produced and the nationalities of their artists.

A visualization showing the streaming activities of Spotify's top user-base on a map.
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*Hover to view region, country & cumulative regional appearances.
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The data from this visualization gives us insights into where popular music, mostly being pop and hip-hop/rap, is being streamed across the world. The concentration of active users in North America and Europe tells us that they are the main consumers of music within Spotify, as well as how they have a big role in what songs appear at the year-end chart rankings.