Coleman SuperStudy: Music ‘Frozen In Time’

• Coleman Insights revealed findings from its third annual Contemporary Music SuperStudy, which examined the appetites for contemporary music among 1,000 12- to 54-year-olds across the U.S. and Canada. The benchmark study evaluated the most consumed songs of the previous year to provide the most comprehensive assessment of consumers’ appetites for new music available to audio-based media companies. The initial findings were announced Thursday at the virtual All Access Audio Summit.

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, while “Baby Shark” by Pinkfong was once 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 Coleman EVP/Sr. Consultant John Boyne, who led the project. “In many ways, the freezing of music tastes makes sense,” Boyne continued. “There were fewer new releases, no concerts, and consumers craved familiar things. 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 13 at 2pm ET/11am PT. The webinar will cover additional findings including how appetites for different genres of new music have shifted in the past year and how those appetites vary by age, gender, ethnicity, geography, and platform usage. Registration is now open for the webinar.