Spotify Wrapped 2023: ‘Music genres at the moment are irrelevant to followers’

This week sees the launch of Spotify Wrapped – the place customers of the streaming service discover out the songs which have dominated their listening habits for the previous 12 months.

The annual advertising and marketing marketing campaign not solely displays a subscriber’s music consumption, it additionally highlights the sheer variety of musical types that make up the location’s catalogue.

From Goths to punk rockers, style can suggest a way of life in addition to a means of merely categorising music. However, within the digital age, round 100,000 new tracks are uploaded to Spotify on daily basis, they usually’re sorted into certainly one of greater than 6,000 style classifications.

Hundreds have been added within the final 12 months alone, from Dream Plugg (a spaced-out model of hip-hop) to Zomi Pop (a fusion of Mayanmar’s conventional Zomi music and Western pop).

So how has this more and more various panorama impacted the sub-cultures that organise themselves round music?

“Genre is a sort of digital group – even earlier than the net age, proper?” US journalist and music critic Kelefa Sanneh tells the BBC.

“It offered a way that there have been others on the market listening to the identical information as you, or making the identical sort of music, even earlier than the web.”

Sanneh, who wrote Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres, says style was additionally helpful for corporations, who might use it as a advertising and marketing instrument.

“It’s been useful for radio stations to be identified for enjoying particular sorts of music and genres, for instance. That means, listeners can pledge their loyalty not solely to the style but additionally to the station.”

But that laser-focused strategy creates bunkers of followers – and musicians – who by no means discover past the borders of their favorite style.

Growing up, he grew to become a fan of UK storage, his tastes dictated by the pirate radio stations he might decide up. Now, he feels these limitations have disappeared.

“My introduction to new music was right down to the a part of London that I grew up in, the college I attended, the barbers and the events I went to,” he informed the BBC.

“Whereas now, as a result of every part simply comes by way of your cellphone – there is not any barrier to being right into a scene.”

He believes style represents so much lower than it did earlier than the streaming period. For most listeners, he says, it is turn into almost “irrelevant”.

“Today, I really feel just like the infrastructure of the music business cares much more about style than the followers.”

Listening to music stays a social expertise however Sanneh says tribalism is dwindling in comparison with the pre-internet days. Back then, music was comparatively scarce and costly, encouraging followers to coalesce round a scene.

However, he says the celebrations across the fiftieth anniversary of hip-hop show that style remains to be helpful for charting the event of a sound.

“In the US, you have seen debates over nation music, the political identification of nation music and who will get to determine the foundations of nation music – and in order that’s one other means by which even now, typically these old classes, these old communities, nonetheless matter.”

Cramp has additionally seen a recent shift. Where artists used to hate being pigeonholed, now they do the pigeonholing themselves.

“In the previous, style was one thing that was utilized to an artist’s music by exterior forces – be that the music press, or whoever – whereas now, you need to select your style your self in an effort to describe and launch music. That is a bizarre twist.”

Simultaneously, there’s been an increase of listeners who class themselves not as followers of a style, however of a single act.

“We use music to specific our individual identification, which implies coming collectively at sure moments and breaking up at others,” Sanneh says.

“You’re a Swifty, you are fan of Ok-pop and a part of the BTS military. You’re going to struggle for the Rihanna Navy, proper? So there’s an entire group based mostly on fandom of a single artist in a means that is a sort of micro style too.”

Sara Sesardic, an editorial lead at Spotify, says the corporate has needed to adapt its technique to shine a highlight on what’s taking place culturally round style.

“What we have seen, particularly over the previous couple of years, is that artists have gotten much more fluid with the sort of music they make, and that style, too, is changing into extra fluid,” she tells the BBC.

“It’s extra about building these communities round artists versus becoming them inside a stereotype of solely being pop, or solely being indie, or solely being dance, or one thing like that.”

Genre stays a key a part of how the streaming service recommends music to its customers, in addition to making it simpler to seek for tracks, nevertheless it’s only one issue Spotify considers, each algorithmically and editorially, when it makes an attempt to match a listener with the best observe, on the proper time.

“Audiences have gotten extra open to listening, experiencing and having fun with various kinds of style, and various kinds of music,” says Sesardic.

“There are artists who would wrestle to slot in playlists that we had for genres, however truly they’re creating a brand new sound that has already engaged with followers. so, we have to create a home for that. We’re consistently reacting so our customers get one of the best expertise.”

Murkage Dave additionally feels there’s crossover – followers of his music are additionally into The 1975, he says – however finds the business is commonly hesitant to class his music as pop as a result of he “would not look how a pop artist seems to be like of their heads”. (Spotify classifies him as “UK different hip-hop”).

In this ever-changing musical period, complete accuracy generally is a problem. On events, his songs have been miscategorised by algorithms or on editorially-curated playlists, and believes that has been damaging for him as an artist.

“I’ll be in some sort of grime combine and I’ve by no means made a grime report in my life,” he says.

“Somehow, I’m the face of this algorithmic grime combine [and] it sort of holds me again. You’re not going to search out followers of my music there.”

“I do know jazz musicians who solely hearken to jazz, they solely like jazz they usually’re not eager about checking anything out – I’m typically envious of that simply because they get to focus a lot on one factor, however I’m positively not that means in any respect.

“I positively need to cater to the listener [rather than streaming services] within the sense that in the event that they determine my music is a sure style, they usually need it to be that, I will not combat them on it.”

Bronx drill, ambient lo-fi and fitness center phonk had been the three largest rising genres on Spotify in 2023. As these micro-categories turn into more and more particular, Sanneh says the idea of style might stop to exist within the streaming period, however communities will proceed to matter.

From an artist’s perspective, Murkage Dave – who likens genres to cake elements that may mix to kind one thing new – hopes he stays unrestrained by style.

“Personally, I want to get to a place the place I’m simply taken on the benefit of the work that I do, slightly than each time I’ve a gathering with somebody on the business facet of issues they’re saying. ‘What field can we put this in?’

“I discover that may be demoralising at occasions.”

Streaming companies actually aren’t going wherever, and neither are personalised playlists tailor-made to every individual consumer. For that purpose, the variety of micro-genres will possible solely enhance as streamers proceed to build ever-more-accurate algorithms.

Perhaps the most important shift is the transfer away from style in favour of suggestions based mostly on temper or the time of day. As the strains between conventional music genres have blurred, they now not outline a listener’s style fairly like they did pre-streaming period.