The rise of streaming services and Gen Z acts like Lil Nas X and Billie Eilish are heralding the end of emo, rap, and country as we know them. And bringing in something better.
Old Town RoadLil Nas X is a Gen Z artist, and Gen Z aren’t interested in labels. The idea that gender and sexuality are fluid — if not accepted by all — has firmly entered public discourse. But just as we move away from traditional boundaries of gender, Gen Z are also tearing down musical boundaries, instead embracing sounds that are fluid and difficult to categorise.
Of course, Gen Z aren’t the first generation to play around with genre. Millennial artists have jumped between genres in the past, but their sounds remained marketably mainstream. But they still belonged to traditional genre categories, even when they were transitioning from one sound to another. Taylor Swift’s switch from country to pop, for instance, was a jump between two long-established, clearly defined sounds, so it can hardly be considered particularly transgressive.
Now, however, younger Gen Z artists are foregoing traditional genre categorisations altogether. But why? It's impossible to discuss this new, hybridised sound without also discussing the stratospheric rise of streaming services, which has completely transformed how we consume music. On platforms like Spotify we're now longer beholden to specific albums or specific genres; we pick and choose our favourite songs to add to playlists instead. And importantly, those playlists are diverse.
Streaming services are important too because of the way they organise the music on their platforms. Although Spotify organises based on genre, it uses more fluid music categorisations as well, allowing for playlists that communicate mood or activity . Unsurprisingly, these playlists are a smorgasbord of genre.
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