Coleman Insights released data from its third annual Contemporary Music SuperStudy, which examined the appetites for contemporary music among 1,000 12- to 54-year-olds across the United States and Canada. And as the classic Led Zeppelin tune goes The Song Remains The Same.
The study evaluated the most consumed songs of the previous year to provide an assessment of consumers’ appetites for new music available to audio-based media companies.
Contemporary Music SuperStudy 3 demonstrated how contemporary music tastes were impacted in 2020, a year in which the normal rhythms of life were upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. In many ways, tastes were frozen in time. The best-testing song, “Shape Of You” by Ed Sheeran, was also last year’s best-testing song. “Baby Shark” by Pinkfong was again the least liked song. Six of the Top 10 songs were in last year’s Top 10. Post Malone remained the most prolific artist with the most songs (six) in the Top 100.
“I felt a bit like Phil Connors in Groundhog Day when analyzing this year’s study,” said Executive Vice President/Senior Consultant John Boyne, who led the project for Coleman Insights. “In many ways, the freezing of music tastes makes sense. There were fewer new releases, no concerts, and consumers craved familiar things.” Boyne continued, “Even still, to have the same top and bottom songs one year and a thousand surveys later is quite remarkable. You could say ‘Shape Of You’ is this year’s comfort food.”
Coleman Insights will release more findings over the next few weeks in its Tuesdays With Coleman blog, followed by the Contemporary Music SuperStudy 3 Deep Dive webinar on Thursday, May 13th at 2PM EDT/11AM PDT.
Excellent post by Charlie Sislin. And, Listeners Were Frozen in time because too many music stations suffered from the same old without timely innovation.