Are you a Routinist, Backstorian or Songsmith?
A look at millennial music discovery segments
Millennials who are listening to music at least once a week and sometimes adding new music to their collection, fall into 3 categories based on their music discovery behavior.
The first dimension is active vs. passive discovery: is this listener investing a lot of time in finding new music (active) or discovering new music by happenstance (passive)? The passive discoverers make up one segment: the Routinists. Within active discoverers, Backstorians are motivated by connecting with the musician as a person, while Songsmiths are motivated by connecting with the music itself. Read on to learn more and to figure out which one you are!
- Backstorians are hungry for information about artists. They use many platforms to keep tabs on their favorite artists. They want to learn as much as possible about the artist using social media, streaming services, blogs, and magazines
- Backstorians become experts in a couple of genres. Within these genres, they know a lot about all the major artists and are paying attention to new acts on the scene.
- They like to be in the know and care a lot about what their friends think about their music taste. Having good taste in music is a core part of their social identity. They tend to be in circles of friends who are into the same styles of music and share a lot of music with each other.
- Songsmiths love finding new songs that they can connect with music based on the sound & lyrics. They are less interested in learning about the celebrity side of an artist and prefer to interact with the music directly.
- In order to find this connection, they keep a very open mind in terms of type of music. 20% like 7+ genres and 65% like 4+.
- While songsmiths are considered trendsetters, their music reputation is not as important to them. They are most interested in finding music that has meaning for them. Thus, we see that they are the least reliant on friends for new recommendations.
- They are discovering everywhere - 80% using 4+ sources and 35% using 7+.
- Routinists listen to music almost every day, but do not actively invest time in discovering new music. Music is primarily background noise, used to influence a mood or to zone out. Routinists have a only a few established sources of discovery and a few ways to listen to music.
- Routinists show minimal engagement with music besides listening to it out of habit, relying on common discovery sources such as the radio and recs from friends, and preferring free services. This segment only used FM radio, Youtube and Pandora at representative levels.
Full findings from my millennial music discovery project out next week. Find them right here on Medium.
Note: this segmentation is based on a nationally representative survey of 1500 Millennials.
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Libby Koerbel loves to analyze ambiguous questions, listen to live music, and meet new people. She is an expert strategist with experience at the Boston Consulting Group, Pandora, Universal Music Group, Muzooka, and Pritzker Group Venture Capital. She is currently a MBA student at the Kellogg School of Management.
This post is a part of a series on how millennials discover content. Read some of the initial findings on discovery journeys, discovery sources, millennial trends, & new music discovery, as well as some musings on: serendipity, innovation in music production, your adventuresomeness quotient, framing uncertainty, curation wars, music tastes, sticky subscription models, and abundance.
