philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Gen Z and young millennials’ surprising obsession

If asked to guess what under 25-year-olds are listening to, it's unlikely that many of us would land upon orchestral music. And yet a survey published in December 2022 by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) found that 74% of UK residents aged under 25 were likely to be tuning into just that at Christmas-time, compared with a mere 46% of people aged 55 or more. These figures reflect not only the RPO's broader finding that under 35-year-olds are more likely to listen to orchestral music than their parents, but also the widespread surge in popularity of classical music in general, particularly among younger generations. ...

Unsurprisingly, social media has played a huge part in this, as a quick search of the popular TikTok hashtag "classictok" (currently at 53.8 million views) attests. There, as well as on Instagram, young classical artists have been making use of the digital realm's democratic potential to lift the heavy velvet curtains on their art form, presenting classical music and its storied history in ways that are accessible, unintimidating and, most importantly, fun. ...

Nigerian-US baritone and lifelong hip-hop fan Babatunde Akinboboye enjoyed a similarly swift and surprising rise to social media fame when he posted a video of himself singing Rossini's renowned aria Largo al factotum over the top of Kendrick Lamar's track Humble. "I was in my car and I realised that the two pieces worked together musically, so I started singing on top of the beat," he tells BBC Culture. He documented the moment on his phone and posted the video on his personal Facebook account, guessing that his friends would enjoy it more than his opera peers. "But I went to sleep, woke up the next morning, and it had expanded to my opera network, and far beyond that," he laughs, explaining that within two days, his self-dubbed brand of "hip-hopera" had caught the attention of The Ellen Show, America's Got Talent and Time magazine. ...

See the full story here: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230113-gen-z-and-young-millennials-surprising-obsession