Music Super Study: Country Music Listener Popularity Jumps

Pop continues to lead consumers’ tastes, Hip Hop/R&B generates polar reactions and Country titles are experiencing an increase in popularity. These are among the major findings of Coleman Insights’ second annual “Contemporary Music SuperStudy,” which the media research firm released Thursday.

The study examines the appetite for contemporary music among 12- to 54-year-olds across the United States and Canada. The firm’s FACT360SM Strategic Music Test platform is utilized to measure the appeal of the most consumed songs of 2019 based on radio airplay, streaming and sales data, as reported by MRC Data/BDSradio.

For the second year in a row, Pop is the best-testing style of music. Despite making up only 18% of the titles tested, Pop songs comprise 34% of the Top 100 Evaluation Average songs in the study. The study also reveals a high level of passion for Hip Hop/R&B titles, as this genre has the second largest portion of the 100 songs with the highest Like A Lot scores. However, the mass appeal of the genre is limited by the fact that many consumers rate these songs negatively. The near-doubling–from 12% to 23%–of Country music in the Top 100 Evaluation Average songs since last year’s study bodes well for this genre.

Additional findings include:

• Ed Sheeran’s “Shape Of You” is the most popular title. As one of the most-consumed songs of 2019, “Baby Shark” by Pinkfong made the test list but ranks last in the study in Evaluation Average.
• Pop and Country are the most popular genres with daily radio listeners, while Pop and Hip Hop/R&B perform best with daily streaming listeners.
• While the test list is comprised of 2019’s most consumed songs, nearly half the list consists of songs released prior to 2019.
• The genre composition of the Top 100 titles is Pop (34%), Country (23%), Hip Hop/R&B (19%), Alternative/Rock (12%), Dance/Electronic (8%), Latin (2%) and Other (2%).
• Post Malone has more songs on the test list than any other artist (10) and claims eight of the Top 100 testing songs.

”We are excited to share this report card on the state of contemporary music,” said Coleman Insights president Warren Kurtzman. “It will give our clients and the audio entertainment industry insights into the tastes of consumers and an objective sense of how those tastes are evolving.”

Coleman Insights will release additional findings and trends from this year’s study over the next four weeks on the firm’s Tuesdays With Coleman blog, at ColemanInsights.com as well as on social media including Facebook and Twitter.