In the on-demand streaming era, music consumption is increasingly fragmented. Consumers are spreading out their listening across varying artists and songs, and personalised recommendations algorithms are pushing them further into niches. Superstars still exist, but their impact is lessening. As a result, we are seeing fewer cultural ‘moments’, meaning shared global experiences. Instead, successful niches become cultural ‘movements’, driving sustained engagement among their audiences. The upside is that because niche communities are often more engaged, movements can be powerful. The rapper Gunna and R&B artist The Weeknd illustrated this when both released albums on 7th January 2022 (titled DS4Ever and DawnFM, respectively).
The Weeknd is objectively the bigger artist of the two, having won four Grammy awards, sold more than 75 million records, and performed a Super Bowl halftime show, among other milestones. According to Google Trends, searches for his album, DawnFM, reached a high peak on the day of the release, followed by an immediate, swift decline. This represents a cultural moment.
Compared to The Weeknd, Gunna is earlier on in his career and has a more niche fanbase, so it is no surprise that DS4Ever garnered fewer Google searches overall. Yet the album sustained search interest for the entire post-release week (and beyond), propelled in part by a social media trend. “Pushing p” — a lyric and song title from the album that has the same general meaning as “keeping it real” — took over the internet in the form of memes about what is and is not “p”. Gunna kept the trend alive with deluxe track ‘P Power’, featuring Drake, and even a “P” merch line. All of this created slopes of attention, which grew over the course of the week rather than peaks — representing a movement rather than a moment. Despite taking place within a micro-community of hip hop fans, the trend boosted Gunna’s profile and helped propel DS4Ever to a No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200 albums chart, while DawnFM arrived at No. 2.