R+P Post 6: Current trends in popular music

To get a good understanding of the current trends in popular music and to see any gaps that could be useful for our work, I looked into the Official UK Charts to see what music was doing well.

Below are screenshots of the top 10 single and album charts from the week 13th - 19th October 2017.

Singles top 10 with genre 

Album top 10

These charts make it easy to see the current trends in popular music in terms of genre and artist. The range of genres represented, highlights the varied music taste nowadays and the move away from being a fan of just one genre that then heavily influences your own aesthetic and lifestyle choices. They also show that hip hop is very popular as well as the merging of it with other less mainstream genres such as Latin and Reggaeton. I think this, coupled with the fact that Liam Gallagher, a British alternative rock/britpop artist, is number 1 on the album charts, and that gender for the artists on the singles chart is fairly even, shows that there is room for a new British male artist from an indie label in the market.

I think that this move away from traditional 'Pop domination' highlights that audiences now are after music that is more standout and maybe less formulaic which is why genres such as hip hop, latin and R&B are doing better, especially in songs that mix elements of all. From this research I will take that it may be better for us to chose a song that isn't mainstream pop and one that has more of an 'old school' vibe to it with possibly elements from different genres such as hip hop, rap or R&B.