Spotify Says Metal Fans are Way More Loyal Than Pop Fans

This may have been obvious already, but it was just verified by a Spotify-conducted study: Fans of metal music are the most loyal to their favorite genre. To create "a measure of genre loyalty," Spotify divided "the number of streams each core artist had by their number of listeners" and shared the results of their findings on their Spotify Insights blog.

Spotify clarified their findings, saying the study determined which genre's main acts are listened to most: "It’s worth remembering our methodology here: We looked for repeated listens to the core artists from each genre — the ones sitting right at the 'center' of the genres, as it were. So one could also reasonably conclude that Jazz, EDM, Classical, and Blues listeners play more fringe artists from those genres." The study also makes the statement that A study found that the "more guitar-oriented genres inspire more loyalty in the listener."

While these findings are sure to please metal fans, one commenter, seemingly a metal fan himself, put forth an insightful argument against the conclusion reached by the study, saying that metal fans have to rely more heavily on streaming services to access their songs of choice than pop fans do, who can hear what they want on the radio almost constantly:

As much as I would love this, IMHO the conclusion is misleading. I would argue that most pop fans can get their fix on the radio, but fans of genres like metal have no choice but to pony up for Spotify to hear their favorite songs in the car.

Even if there was a metal station, a lot of metal fans are actually fans of one or two subgenres. For example, black/death and prog/djent are apples and oranges, and so are their fans. In contrast, most pop fans will probably listen to whatever Taylor Swift puts out.

The Spotify study discovered a lot more than just metal's popularity: They also found out that the genre with the most loyal listeners in France is French reggae, and the three genres with the most devout followers in the U.S. are Regional Mexican, Latin Pop and Native American.

Regardless of the conclusions that may or may not have been jumped to, Spotify brought together a lot of interesting data, so have a look here.

Metallica – "Metal Militia"