Whether you’re into country music, obsessed with indie-alternative beats, prefer R&B, vibe to hip-hop or gravitate toward folk, punk or rock ‘n’ roll, it’s highly likely that you feel that the music you love plays an integral role in shaping who you are as an individual. In other words, the songs you listen to on a regular basis are akin to a personality trait. At the same time, although it’s undeniable that equating someone’s music taste to their personality is anything but new — just think about all the Kiss, Grateful Dead, AC/DC die-hard fans that dominated the 20th century music scene and proclaimed themselves “hardcore rockers” — social media has recently broadened the scope of this trend.
Social media users everywhere are sharing their favorite tunes with the world in the hopes of connecting and bonding with others over shared music tastes. Features such as Spotify Wrapped, Instagram’s Spotify-sharing feature, Tinder’s music setting options and apps like bopdrop that exist to discover new music are just some of the tools that make these connections possible.
Spotify Wrapped
Every December, eager to share their favorite bops with their friends and followers, Spotify subscribers all around the globe rush to check out their top five most-listened-to bands and their five most-listened-to songs of the year.
Spotify Wrapped also alerts super-fans, i.e., audiences in the top 1% of an artist’s listeners, of their mega-fan status. Consequently, many people shared their top artists on social media, allowing for the potential to connect with their favorite bands and artists. A clear example of this occurred with The Lumineers; the band posted their streams on Twitter and even gave shoutouts to some of their biggest fans by retweeting the top 0.1% and 0.5% listeners.
Spotify’s yearly Wrapped release really opened up the potential to connect with music lovers everywhere as well as the artists and bands themselves. By sharing the results of your Spotify Wrapped on any social media platform, you share a piece of yourself — a piece of your personality, your ambiance, your vibe — with your followers.
Instagram Feature
As soon as you open up your Instagram app and start scrolling through the stories of the people you follow, it’s inevitable that you will stumble upon a post with a song attached, the promotion of a specially created Spotify playlist or maybe even just a niche song that a friend was feeling that day.
Evidently, with its easy posting features and limitless cache of tunes, Instagram has also been swept up into the trend of music sharing. Whether it be carefree country girl, quirky indie band dude, slightly emo rock ‘n’ roll chick, funky R&B lover or out-there screamo-music fan, all of your Instagram followers are instantly tuned into your vibe and can get to know a little bit more about you than they previously did. Although a picture is worth a thousand words, there’s something about a song being added to your post that takes the moment to the next level — as well as enhancing your “Insta vibe” and your outward presentation.
Tinder
Even the uber-popular dating and hookup app Tinder gives users the option to include their favorite artists and songs in their bios. This only goes to show that music taste is a perfect conversation starter as well a huge indicator of personality and, in a way, compatibility. If you are diabolically opposed to country music, for example, it’s hard to imagine listening to country with a new date on your 40-minute drive to your favorite pizza parlor.
As Newsroom noted, Tinder found that “adding an ‘anthem’ [one stand-out song] to your dating profile improves your swiping experience, leading to more matches. Since music is the number one ‘Passion’ that members include on their profiles globally, adding an anthem may just be the best way to spark a conversation.”
Whether you’re looking for a one-night stand or a steady partner, it’s likely that you’ll gravitate toward someone that has a similar music taste as you. We connotate music choice with personality and with an individual’s all-around vibe. Shared music taste is a form of bonding, a fantastic conversation starter and an overall great way to find a shared commonality with someone that you don’t know much about.
Bopdrop
Finally, it’s essential to mention the novel app bopdrop, which allows its users to share their favorite tunes with their followers on a regular basis. Every day, users post a song that they are feeling and vibing with; their followers can then preview the song and like, comment or add it to an auto-generated Spotify or Apple Music playlist.
Bopdrop is a great way to find new music, as well as new friends. The newest update on bopdrop allows users to connect with each other on Instagram, Spotify and Apple Music by including links to each app in their bopdrop bios.
Bopdrop is perhaps the most striking example that shows how wrapped up music taste is with personality. Bopdrop friends can comment on music posts, ask how peoples’ days are going, comment on how much they love a song and the memories it conjures as well as request for social links to connect on other apps.
Now What?
It’s clear that social media has only further perpetuated and fostered the reality that music taste is connected to an individual’s personality. Music taste can determine compatibility, serve as a form of social cohesion, enhance the bonding experience between strangers and allow for a deeper analysis of who exactly a person is.
Music is so attached to what it means to be human that it makes sense that we feel a close bond with individuals who like the same genres, artists and songs that we do. Our music taste is an integral part of us, and social media allows us to easily show off our favorite tunes to start conversations, bond with others and appreciate our shared human experience.
Music helps define who we are — it’s not something to be ashamed of. Belt your favorite songs out in the shower, roll your windows down to pump your best-loved tunes, tell everyone who will listen your all-time cherished artists and use social media to share your music with the world — someone will undeniably fall just as in love with your tunes as you have.
