“Music that breaks the rules, just a little bit.” A rather ominous description for one of Spotify’s vastly popular new playlist titled: “Lorem.” The playlist, which appeared on the music platform rather unassumingly in early 2019, features some more well-known artists like Harry Styles and Frank Ocean, along with artists that are not as well-known, like, beabadoobee and Dayglow. With music ranging from indie-pop and alternative R&B, to garage rock and a little bit of hip-hop, this playlist was seemingly created for a new generation of listeners. In this way, it is not surprising that the playlist eventually emerged as being targeted toward Generation Z listeners. Looking further, this playlist can tell us more than we think.
It is important to understand a bit about how Spotify operates and how it got to be so popular. For regular listeners, it is nearly impossible to miss the playlists “Made For You,” which include a “Discover Weekly,” full of new tracks and four “Daily Mixes,” which intertwine personal favorites and songs that relate to them. For the most part, the playlists take liked tracks by the listener and group them based on genre, while adding in songs listeners of the same genre have been listening too. This has been a feature of the music streaming platform for almost as long as it has existed, so it is less of a surprise when a playlist based on an entire group of listeners was created. But just who are these listeners and why are they listening to this music?
As previously stated, it has been revealed that “Lorem” is targeted toward Gen Z listeners, that is listeners that are currently between the ages of 4 and 24 years. It is generally understood that members of Gen Z were born between 1996 and 2010. This generation is widely regarded as the digital generation, growing up with internet in the home, laptops in schools and smartphones in their hands. Creating a playlist targeted at these individuals means that the music added has to reflect the interests of the literal new generation. Spotify was able to recognize trends and make connections between these listeners and creates a seamless playlist for the current generation of artists.
With music ranging from Cavetown’s acoustically pleasing “Sweet Tooth” to Beach Bunny’s more punk sound, it is hard to distinguish why many of these artists are being pulled together, but what is even more interesting is why it seems to work so well. As indicated previously, members of Gen Z grew up with far more information and media than any other generation, this includes music. This generation was not confined to what was playing on the radio, in part due to streaming platforms like Spotify, but other media platforms like YouTube and iTunes. In this sense, it was easier for these younger listeners to branch out into different genres and different artists. Not only did this affect listeners, it affected the artists that they listen to as well. Artists like Clairo cannot necessarily be grouped with BROCKHAMPTON in genre, but they are undeniably connected through the demographic they reach. It’s a demographic not confined by genre. Spotify was able to break down barriers between listeners and artists and create a playlist to bring a generation together.
Image from Harry Styles via YouTube
