Gen Z: Music and Style

Growing up or being born in the years 1997-2012 would mean that you are either part of Gen Z or are living through their influence. The most commonly known generations before this are Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers. All three of these generations have been influenced by Gen Z and their lifestyle. A couple common shared interests throughout this generation are music and fashion (style). However, Gen Z also has to take into account what the future for the following generations will look like because of them. The next generation born from the years 2010-2024 are called Generation Alpha. Many contributions that Gen Z brings into the world will be adapted by Gen Alpha.

Music

One of the most common hobbies for people born in Generation Z, and people in general, is listening to music. Noticeably, music style and composition has changed over the years. In addition to the type of music changing and evolving, so did the radio sales. Below is a graph which examines this in further depth:

As the graph shows, radio sales increase each year. In the final year shown, 1929, the sales have gone up to $842M. This is a huge and significant increase considering just 7 years ago the sales were only making it to $60M.

Looking below, we can examine another graph which shows the ways that people born in Gen Z are streaming their music everyday in the year 2018.

As shown, the majority of people listen to their music from a streaming service or a smartphone. The smallest percentage streams their music from a CD player.

Below is a chart describing the top artists that represent Gen Z from 2019. The 27-37 year olds, however, are millennials.

Something significant about this chart is that as people get older, their music taste and favorite artists become more popular according to their life time period. The 27-37 year olds ranked Michael Jackson as their 4th option, however, he is not seen on the charts for the other age categories. This shows the popularity of certain artists amongst certain age groups depending on the year and the ages of the people that streamed them in that period of time.

Fashion and Style

While observing what older family members or older people wear, you may notice that their clothing style is different from yours. This is because over the years different articles of clothing have been trendy and they sometimes die out and then come back as fashionable years later.

Below are two pictures showing the evolution of men's style vs womens style:

Looking at the two images, it is noticeable that flared open ended pants were fashionable in the 1940s and the 1970s. Lucky for us, they are trendy again now! The second image does a good job of displaying how women's dresses have changed. The first dress on the far left appears to be more reserved and traditional, while the one to the far right is more open. The brown/orange dress is an accurate representation of today's style and what many celebrities might wear.

Tying everything back together, fashion and music are two principal aspects to many peoples lives now, and many years ago. These two categories of interest attract many people from multiple generations. As the word evolves and moves on, so will fashion and music. It will definitely be interesting to see how these two things change or remain similar with the next generation!