A collection of different vinyls lined up next to a record player.

Something that I’ve noticed across school is how many people are always listening to music. Whether it’s in class doing work or even in the hallways as people walk to class, everywhere I look, someone is listening to music.

When I asked senior April Perez how often she listened to music, she said “I listen to music all the time,” but how do people like her gain access to music?

Nowadays with streaming apps like Spotify and Apple Music, listening to music is way easier than it was 20 years ago. These apps grant users the ability to listen to all types of music from around the world in one place, and they don’t even have to spend a penny since these apps are normally free (unless you pay for monthly subscriptions). The accessibility of music is why so many people of our generation have seemed to use it almost as a defining trait.

“I would think I hold music pretty highly towards myself… When somebody gets to know me, they should know what kind of music I like,” junior Daisy Bastida said.

Due to the streaming of music and the heavy influence that it carries in today’s world, people seem to connect to music more now than ever before and have music for every occasion and feeling they might have. Gen Z has in a way taken the standard of sticking to a genre out the window and using personal connections/feelings to find the music they like instead.

Hypebot’s article on how much music Gen Z consumes and how crucial they are to the music industry says that people around the ages of 13-24 tend to listen to around three  hours and 43 minutes of music daily. In comparison to the rest of the population, that’s 40 more minutes spent during the day listening to music.

A major part of how impactful music is to Gen Z is how it serves as emotional support for people and can help with a stressful day by being a stress reliever. It can also help comfort people when they’re down by listening to songs and artists that connect to them and what they’re feeling in that moment, whether they’re happy, sad or a bit angry.

“Whenever I’m in a happy mood, obviously I’m gonna listen to more hype music, and whenever I’m in a sad mood, I’m not gonna want to talk as much so I’m gonna be blasting, like, any type of sad music,”  Perez said.

Music not only helps people emotionally, but it can also allow them to find out parts of them and their personality that they’ve never fully expressed out in the open. An article written by Little Black Book states that four out of every five Gen Z listeners learn something new about themselves whenever they look back at the different types of music they’ve listened to. Those same people who had said they learned something new also stated that they were able to dive deeper into different sides of their personalities. When people find these different sides of themselves, it can sometimes affect how they act, dress or even talk by going more into that side of them that expresses who they really are and their music taste.

When Bastida was asked if music affected the way she acted or dressed, she said, “I wouldn’t say like, directly, but I feel like, my music tastes there’s like stereotypes around, like, how you dress and stuff, but I feel like, not really in a sense, I feel like I’m still kind of true to myself.”

Many people fall into creating a whole genre of music into who they are. Some people that enjoy certain genres, but don’t make it their whole thing, can throw ordinary people into shock when they find out that they like music like rock or rap, but don’t dress or act like it. Why might they be shocked? Because people tend to stereotype certain types of music by their fan base and how they dress or act.

Although stereotyping genres of music and their fanbases isn’t the best thing, there are more positives to finding music genres you like. For example, finding or re-discovering music that you like might allow you to reach a bigger understanding of who you are as a person by the way you listen to the music. Finding a connection with an artist you really like is a very special thing for a lot of people because it makes them feel as if they’re understood by the music they listen to or use it as a way to find themselves again.

“I had been playing Frank Ocean during the summer, the Blonde album, and at the time, I was going through a phase where I was like ‘dang. Who in the world am I?’ And so that music, like, kind of helped me understand myself a little more,” said Bastida.

Clearly, whether you’ve noticed it or not, music has had a major effect on this generation and how they shape who they are in comparison to older generations like Millennials, all thanks to the existence of the internet and music streaming making it so easy to listen to music in today’s age where Gen Z is now starting to adapt things like music into their everyday lives. Whether they’re at work, studying or showering, music is always involved in some way, almost like a soundtrack to get through the day. Music has played a pivotal role in shaping the newer generations, proving to be a vital part of how they represent themselves to other people.