Albums no longer exist to be consumed over the span of months or years. Now, an album is declared a flop within minutes online before people have even had a chance to listen to it in its entirety.
Gen Z was raised on curated playlists, TikTok song recommendations, and clips of popular streamers’ reactions to new music. They were taught that music is readily available alongside opinions about it online. We don’t need to wait on carefully crafted album reviews anymore.
Specifically looking at Gen Z, the rumors are true: we do have the attention span of a Vine (RIP), and we don’t look at music criticism coming from top music publications, journalists, or carefully thought-out reviews from reputable sources. Music criticism, for us, lives in TikTok videos that are under a minute long, Twitch clips reviewing albums, the comments section of videos, and streamers giving their two cents.
Streaming culture has entirely shifted the way we as a generation consume music. Viral content has replaced critics as the people solidifying what’s hot in music for Gen Z. If something doesn’t resonate immediately, we scroll away and a new song is already there waiting.
Streaming has also fundamentally changed who audiences trust when it comes to musical opinions. The first voice and opinion we hear on music is, more often than not, no longer a professional music journalist; it’s a streamer giving a reaction in real time.
Different from previous generations, Gen Z lives in a world where influence doesn’t just come from celebrities and artists; it also comes from media personalities and streamers. We want quick, easily shareable reactions and opinions. Discourse that shapes the younger audience’s musical opinion is now happening in the comments sections of viral clips from popular streamers, and major albums are getting called flops because they got negative reactions during a live reaction video.
There’s an insane pressure to be able to digest music immediately now, and therefore to make music that can be digested at lightning speed online. This is because revisiting music and letting it simmer simply doesn’t exist with the younger generations anymore. But few artists have adapted to the new way the younger generation consumes music.
Artists like Drake, though, understand the formula and have built album rollouts around capturing a rather unreachable, but still available, audience. Drake, quite honestly, doesn’t need to do a whole lot of promotion for an album — he has dominated charts not only in the hip-hop space across the country, but also across the globe.
Despite that, he chose to put himself in the direct eye line of the younger generation by inserting himself into streaming culture. Drake seems to understand that this is the way to reach a younger audience — specifically the audience that dominates viral songs on TikTok. For his newest album, he didn’t rely on traditional marketing or paid media. He instead used earned media to make himself a topic of conversation in the streaming landscape.
Drake’s new album enjoyed viral reactions by popular streamers like Adin Ross, Arky, Lacy, and Agent. These reactions had their own moments online and became viral TikTok content.
For example, for his album ICEMAN Drake included a skit at the end of “Plot Twists” featuring popular 19-year-old streamer Yonna and popular media personality/streamer Ben. That skit for that album led to multiple viral reactions from popular streamers, as it came as a surprise to all of them listening live. Lacy had a viral reaction to hearing Yonna on the song, with the clip on TikTok earning over one million likes. He also name drops popular streamer Adin Ross in “Make Them Pay” off ICEMAN saying “I was Aiding Ross streams before Adin Ross had ever streamed”. This created conversation about the album in very non-traditional spaces.
@lacy
Drake is currently using a similar strategy with “Hoe Phase,” a song from his album Maid of Honor. The song is gaining traction online because popular TikTok creators like Alix Earle and Rhegan are posting videos using the audio. Most of these creators are young women coining it the song for “girl summer.” These types of trends online are what keep releases a constant topic of conversation beyond release week.
More artists need to understand what Drake understands: albums now aren’t just consumed by traditional listenership. Viral clip reactions, memes, TikTok edits and trends are what create the space for music to reach new audiences and exist outside of established fan bases.
Streaming culture has shaped media as a whole, but within that, it has truly shaped how music is distributed. Gen Z doesn’t sit with music the way older generations did. Musical opinions are shaped within minutes now, not within months. There’s no room for evolving opinions on musical projects anymore, because online reactions now have a spot at the table alongside the actual musicality of projects.
That doesn’t mean Gen Z aren’t true music lovers, though. I’d argue they consume more music than any other generation before them, but the media landscapes we’ve lived in for the last decade have shaped the attention span we have for it. Having unlimited access to music isn’t something any other generation has grown up with, but it has impacted the way we absorb it and how long we sit with it.
Artists like Drake can successfully drop 3 albums at once, not necessarily because he makes the best music available, but because he understands the quick consumption style that dominates the modern media environment. He understands that online conversations can drive charts, and those online conversations oftentimes live in the streaming ecosystem with Gen Z.
