Issue 5, vol. 1 - June 2005

Ahhh... the sweet diversity of youth! We see it big time when it comes down to musical preferences – of that there is no doubt. As always, we recommend to anyone planning on working music into their marketing mix to be extremely cognizant of currency, appeal of various artists to specific socio-cultural niches and, most importantly, to embrace diversity as much as possible. Youth, in general, like to play the musical field and are attracted to different types of music to suit different moods and settings.

However, the following data taken from a recent Ping study fielded in Spring 2005, does highlight some key trends that help figure out the lay of the musical land.

First off, hip hop continues to lose appeal steadily with young Canadians. It’s not dead nor will it be in the foreseeable future, but its current cultural cachet has been watered down significantly by what is becoming seen as a formulaic, corporately-driven agenda with a majority of artists all looking, rapping and thugging like the other. This developing negative perception of hip hop has gone mainstream and youth are telling us that “hip hop is over.” Even teen fashion retailers are starting to pull away from hip hop-inspired clothing lines. This is definitely something to consider.

Rock and songwriter-focused music tend to drive major musical trending right now. Combining all the strictly “rock” musical formats, fully 36% of Canadian youth currently identify some form of rock as the one type of music they listen to the most. Compared to the combined power of hip hop and R&B (at a comparatively meager 16%) this really represents a dramatic shift in mainstream musical affiliation and influence.

This is best seen in Canadian fashion where the typical hip hop sweats are being increasingly replaced by faux vintage rock concert tees emblazoned with the logos of classic rockers. How many Led Zeppelin shirts have you seen downtown this week?

Overall, senior teens and young adults tend to be more diverse in their musical tastes (which makes them harder to target) while junior teens and tweens tend to experiment less. This reduced sense of diversity is very strongly driven by younger females (the easiest to target) who show incredibly strong affiliation with a small number of choice artists, currently Avril Lavigne, Hilary Duff, Gwen Stefani and Usher. You could call this the “pin-up” effect, which has always held strong with this young demo.