Since the media have become less centralized: the musical streamers replaced the radio stations, Tiktok killed the music video and so on – how people consume music and those who listen, has become even more fragmented. But today Trump represents a awakened avatar of cultural union. It could be the closer thing to our society that we have at a single culture. In the United States, it is the only thing that the majority of people are all corrected in a fervor, whether they are in favor or against what it represents.
Its influence goes well beyond the fractured political arena of Washington, DC, says Powers, and could also have an effect on the musical charts. One of the reasons why there is no summer song this year “could have to deal with Trump in a strange way”, a figure whose shadow is proposed and has everything “to do with the change of dominant culture”.
“There have been many discussions towards the end of the electoral season and immediately after Trump has been elected for country music in some way provides Trump. And I think there is something in this. Now there are more conservative contact points in the culture that people cannot really ignore the way they were before,” he says, mentioning the show Paramount+ YellowstoneThe return of commercial wives in pop discourse and the Maha movement. “Everything adapts to this.”
But there are also other culminating factors – a perfect storm of circumstances – which have contributed to an unpredictable summer for music.
For one, listening habits are again moving to streaming services such as Spotify and Soundcloud, where tastes are becoming more eclectic, people venture outside their comfort areas and loyalty to any kind seems to be a dying tendency. The industry also suffers from what is equivalent to a crisis of authenticity on creative paternity since the streamers are flooded with Ai Slop, which has become a genre of its own. Then there is the Trump of everything, whose overbearing influence can represent a new version of the monoculture that not even the music industry can evade.
Powers, who is a professor of media studies at the University of Michigan and author of On the trend: the business of the forecast of the future, He says that his influence could, in fact, have an effect on the musical charts. It is not even far away. According to the half year of Luminate Survey on musical trendsReleased last month, more music is transmitted in streaming than ever, but the overall growth is slowed down globally.
Despite this, Christian music is increasing. The genre is evolving quickly, both in the way it is defined that in the way it is discovered.
“Traditionally, it existed in a fairly closed ecosystem, with limited distribution, niche promotion channels and a very specific audience, especially on radio and retail sale”, says JJ Italian, head of global musical care and discovered in Spotify. “But as the younger listeners, natives in streaming have become more dominant, there has been room for a new wave of Christian artists and led by faith to explore a wider sound.”