For those of you that don’t know, I ran a music newsletter called Niktunes, which was intended to show people cool songs I had found and provide some light snarky commentary about something happening in the music realm. I unfortunately found myself short of time, and ultimately decided to shut the newsletter down, but it was a great learning experience about creating content for consumers, understanding how to publicize your page, and learning how unfunny you are when you’re forced to stick to a schedule. But one of the best parts of this 8-month experiment was that I learned a lot about how people consume music, which I sent to my userbase. The relevant parts from the final newsletter are below:
We Had A Good Run
So as you guys may have noticed (because your life revolves around Niktunes), I haven’t actually sent one of these out for a while. I’ve decided to put Niktunes on an “indefinite hiatus”, which is the quitters way of saying it’s shutting down. I don’t really have the time to dedicate to it anymore, and I’m just not listening to as much as I used to. This was actually an awesome 8-month experiment, and I learned a lot from doing it. Not just about how to structure, organize, and distribute content (and how terrible some rap lyrics are), but also a lot about how people consume music. I thought I would use my final Niktunes to talk a bit about what I’ve learned both from the data behind Niktunes and actually talking to people.
I think the main point I’ve learned is that how people come to like music is mostly based on the experience in which they encounter this music. People who have no real discernible music taste tend to like pop since it’s what is played when they go out. People whose music experience is tied to smoking weed and playing music tend to like songs in the 70-85 BPM range with drawn out melodies (aka stoner music), since they’re slower and chiller. People who enjoy break dancing very much like music in the 100-115 BPM range since it makes them want to freestyle on the spot. I’ve even noticed this in myself; I much more enjoyed electronic music in college when I used to dance, but today I much more enjoy alternative rock and hip hop with hard beats as exercise became a more central part of my life. Because of this, the idea of a music newsletter doesn’t create the same emotional connection to experiences that happens when you hear memorable music.
The second thing I noticed was that people can generally be put into two groups in terms of how they consume music. There are passive people, who really are only into music as they encounter it (the majority of people). And then there’s the second group of people who are very much active about finding new music. The problem is that the first group of people don’t care enough about engaging with a newsletter (signing up, opening the newsletter, clicking through multiple links, making sure they revisit it later if they’re busy when they get it, etc.). And the second group of people don’t like another person telling them what to listen to, part of what they pride themselves in is that they “found” the music.
And finally, it seems that when people find a song that they like, they listen to it quite obsessively. To an extent I already knew this based on my own personal experiences with music, but it was interesting to see the data behind the playlists. For the people that did click, they tended to repeat songs several times. The sample set here was very small, but I would guess that a broader survey would find similar conclusions. Just think about how many times you found a song you liked then listened to it until it physically pained you to press replay again.
In any case, I really hope you guys enjoyed the newsletters. Putting out funny content in regular intervals was a lot harder than I thought (probably cause I’m not very funny)…I have so much more respect for people that write for a living. If you have any comments or want to talk about music, Niktunes, or how shitty my jokes are, feel free to shoot me an email at nkrishnan92@gmail.com or @nikillinit on twitter.