Industry News
SELECTED ITEMS OF INTEREST TO THE MEDIA COMMUNITY
Spotify’s “Listening Age” is a shock: Gen Zers love oldies and Boomers love the new
Spotify's Wrapped feature is just one of the brilliant ways the company reinforces customer captivity. It has been so successful that Apple Music and Duolingo among others give users a similar year-end report. For the 2025 release, the “Listening age” was debuted – and it has been the most discussed feature.
According to sentiment analysis from Meltwater and survey reporting from Edison Research, in the U.S., of the four generations, only the Millennials have no “audio generation gap.” The rest of us seem to have a bit of “age envy.”
The calculation is a little fiddley, and not confirmed by Spotify, but according to Edison, it is based on the theory that people have the strongest emotional recall of music created between the ages of 16 and 21. Edison says that:
- Spotify analyzes the release years of each individual's top 100 songs, identifying which year has the highest density of streams to determine the “peak” listening year
- The company assumes that listening peaks when a person is ~18 year old
- And then this listening age is compared to real age
And voila! Z's wish they were 47 years older than they are, while Boomers wish they were 49 years younger --which isn't so crazy!
Edison found that 30% of Gen Z discovers music through social media -- like Tik/Tok or Insta. The theory is that Gen Z's audio age calculation is deeply affected by the "vintage" tracks that are promoted on social media platforms.
To read more: Meltwater, Westwood Share of age and Edison's Gen Z report
#managementconsulting #Listeningage #contentdistribution
Porn—at the forefront of the AI-generated content revolution—is something the rest of media should, uh, watch
TVRev's Alan Wolk makes the case that where porn goes, so goes all content categories. He says that “Porn has long been the canary in the coal mine for any new technology.”
- Almost as soon as Gutenberg invented the printing press it was used for “bawdy pamphlets”
- Porn producers made use of VHS before Hollywood did
- Porn was an early adapter to streaming; Wolk says “it accounted for between one-third and one-half of all traffic" in the early days
- Of the top 15 websites world-wide, 2 are porn sites.
A long article in the Economist raises existential questions that are not only for the porn industry.
- Will performers be “elbowed aside by algorithms?”
- If synthetic properties become ubiquitous, will anyone pay for the old-fashioned stuff?
Read the full articles: The Future Of AI and AI is upending the porn industry: Synthetic smut will soon be flooding the internet, bringing new opportunities and perils
#managementconsulting #mediastrategy
TV is not dead yet: more Americans still prefer to watch the news than read or listen to it
Despite the changes in which companies and individuals are supplying news, Pew Research reports that despite “the rise of podcasts and news influencers on social media to declining audiences for traditional news outlets,” Americans mostly like to watch the news – 44% -- and 62% of those prefer to watch from TV, and 34% saying they prefer using digital devices, including via social media and news websites or apps.
Younger ages have flipped the watch/read percentages in 2025, with Pew reporting that, “Among adults under age 30, the largest share prefers to get news by reading it (45%), while 31% say they prefer watching it….”
Also of interest:
- For all American Adults, of those who prefer reading the news, 80% do so on digital devices
- For all American Adults, of those who prefer listening to the news, 52% do so through digital devices and 20% through radio
For more information go to Pew Research Center here.
#managementconsulting #mediadistribution #mediastrategy
