Blog

Where Is the Music Passion Today?

By Peter Don, BPR

In past times, in radio and record stores, passion for music wasn’t hard to find. You heard it in teenage bedrooms, saw it in record collections, and felt it in the queues for concert tickets. People didn’t just like music — they loved it. Passion, in research terms, was measurable: it was the people who loved a particular style of music and it showed.

Fast forward to today, and something has changed.

Recent research shows decline in music passion, particularly among contemporary music styles and among adult audiences. Once-dominant pop formats are showing lower ‘love’ scores than ever before. The concept of a “hit” is now more fragmented, more transient — and it raises a serious question: Where is the music passion today?

 

A Gender Flip in Passion

Historically, female listeners tended to be more passionate than males when it came to music they loved. Women consistently showed stronger emotional connections to current pop, rhythmic, and dance styles — styles that sat at the core of CHR and Hot AC formats.

Men, on the other hand, were more reserved in their responses. Their musical interest skewed more toward older genres — especially rock. Whether it was classic rock, pop-rock, or more hard-edged guitar-driven tracks, male audiences traditionally displayed more loyalty to music from their youth than to whatever was topping the charts at the moment.

But those trends are now shifting.

Today, we see a surprising reversal. Female passion for current music is falling — significantly in some formats. Meanwhile, male listeners are showing increased passion overall. While much of that energy is still focused on older genres,  it’s now being expressed with a level of enthusiasm that once belonged more to female audiences.

 

A Newfound Love for the Old

Together with the loss of passion for contemporary music genres,  music from the past is having a moment — and not just with those who were there the first time around.

Rhythmic hits from the MTV era, as well as pop from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, and guitar-driven classics from the 70s and 80s, are all seeing a renewed interest. This revival isn’t just nostalgic — it’s generational. Older music appears to offer something listeners feel is missing in much of today’s output: memorable melodies, emotional storytelling, and familiarity.

Classic Rock in particular has remained remarkably stable in its appeal. While its core audience is still predominantly older and male, it has gained surprising traction among younger demographics as well. Part of this is thanks to its reappearance in pop culture — movies, TV shows, and video games regularly borrow from that rich archive. When a Queen anthem plays in a Marvel film or a Led Zeppelin riff underpins a TikTok trend, a new generation takes notice.

In case you haven’t noticed, the vinyl revival has brought tangible value back to music — especially older music. The act of buying a record, placing it on a turntable, and hearing it through analog warmth is a far cry from streaming 20-second snippets on a phone. In a fast, fragmented world, this slowness is part of the appeal.

 

So What Happened to Today’s Hits?

Contemporary music still exists — but its emotional connection feels diluted. Among adults, the passion for current hit music is simply lower. Even among younger audiences, who still consume new music, their engagement seems fleeting.

Part of the reason lies in how music is now discovered. Platforms like TikTok have redefined what a “hit” looks like. Songs can go viral overnight, soundtracking millions of videos, only to be forgotten a few weeks later. Exposure is high, but depth of connection is often low.

What used to be a shared cultural experience — watching the same music videos, hearing the same top 10 songs on every station — has splintered into hundreds of micro-trends, each with its own niche audience. Artists can have chart-topping success on one platform and still be virtually unknown outside of it.

This environment favours novelty and speed over depth and longevity — and that makes it harder for listeners to form long-lasting emotional bonds with songs or artists. Today’s hits often aren’t allowed to age into tomorrow’s classics.

 

Age, Attention, and Access

The generational divide in musical passion is more pronounced than ever. Listeners under 25 still show interest in new music, but their attention spans—shaped by algorithmic feeds and endless scrolling—are shorter. A song may thrive or flop based on the first 10 seconds, or even its snippet on TikTok, rather than the full listening experience.

Older audiences, on the other hand, aren’t being drawn to new music as they once were. Previously, new songs would effortlessly enter adult awareness through mass media — radio, TV, and even movie soundtracks. Nowadays, that connection is lost. Without a clear channel delivering new music to broader demographics, new releases struggle to achieve cross-generational familiarity.

 

A Fragmented Landscape

What we’re seeing isn’t a disappearance of passion, but a redirection. Passion still exists — but it’s less about what’s new and more about what’s familiar, timeless, or emotionally resonant. The music people care about most today is often the music that meant something to them in the past, or the music that feels authentic in an over-curated world.

For programmers, marketers, and artists, this presents a challenge: how do you reignite passion in a fractured landscape? Is it through deep-catalogue playlists? Revamped classics? Curated nostalgia? Or can contemporary music still find its footing with emotional connection, not just digital reach?

 

So… Where Is the Passion?

It’s still there. But it has migrated.

You’ll find it in a 45-year-old man rediscovering The Rolling Stones on vinyl. In a 30-year-old woman revisiting the boy bands of her youth. In teenagers belting out Kate Bush thanks to a TV show. Or in a TikTok creator bringing new life to a forgotten hit from 1997.

Passion hasn’t disappeared — but it’s less about what’s trending today, and more about what means something.

And that might just be music’s greatest evolution yet.