Is There Cold Weather Music?

Another summer has come and gone. The big question is, what was your summer song? Despacito, maybe? Every summer seems to have a song. As the outside temperature changes along with the leaves, does your music choice do the same?

Walking around campus and seeing the weather change, we asked students the question, is there cold weather music? “I have a Spotify summer playlist and I don’t listen to any of those songs when it’s winter. I tend to listen to softer, less upbeat music. So yeah, there must be winter music,” explains Hannah Losavio ‘21.

“To find out how music listening changes by season, Spotify analyzed the stream counts and genres of the 100,000 most popular artists over a two year period, using global, anonymous, aggregated listening.”

Spotify has collected data from users and proven that music does change through the season. According to the article, fall brings in traditional and acoustic music. Winter tends to bring in spoken word recordings, mellower subgenres, and lots of listening to music associated with countries, perhaps as people return to their roots for the holidays. Spring brings in upbeat genres along with summer. Summer adds beach-oriented genres like deep tropical house and raga jungle.

“Absolutely music changes from season to season. With the colder weather I listen to Ed Sheeran,” said Mary Schweiker ‘19. That goes hand in hand with the Spotify article that proves in winter, mellower genres tend to be listened to often.

It’s clear that summer has its hits and genres and after all so does winter. It may not be as clear that winter has music of it’s own besides holiday music, but when you step back you realize the songs you listen to all summer long aren’t played during the cooler parts of the year. After all, there is music for the colder weather.