Wavelength by MAX Maps Consumer Trends to Music Fandom

Built on a study of 14,000+ US consumers, MAX’s new Wavelength™ platform pairs traditional segmentation with music fandom to surface patterns that demographic cuts miss.

Originally published on Business Wire

Announcing Wavelength™ by MAX

MAX (Music Audience Exchange) launches Wavelength, a multi-category consumer trends platform that connects traditional demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data with a layer most studies ignore: music taste.

MAX has spent years building infrastructure around this connection. The company’s proprietary Artist Matching Engine™ segments audiences using 300+ demographic, psychographic, sociographic, and consumer behavior attributes and has powered brand partnerships with brands like Ford, McDonald’s, AARP, and more by matching them with artists whose fan bases align with their target consumers.

Wavelength extends that intelligence beyond brand-artist matching and into a broader research offering, putting the patterns MAX sees across its platform directly into the hands of marketers and brands.

The platform is built on responses from more than 14,000 US consumers aged 13–64, with deliberate oversampling of young Black and Latino respondents. The study spans age, gender, ethnicity, and income and was designed with multiple layers of data validation and statistical testing, producing data that holds up even at narrow audience segments.

With attributes spanning categories from automotive and finance to beauty, travel, food, and entertainment, Wavelength gives marketers a detailed behavioral picture of their audiences: not just who they are, but how they spend, what they watch, and what they care about.

What distinguishes Wavelength from other consumer research is its music layer. A Gen Z country fan's purchase patterns look different from a Gen Z pop fan's, which, in turn, look different from a Gen Z indie pop fan’s.

Wavelength makes those distinctions visible.

“Music is a powerful proxy for consumer behavior. The communities we form around music inform our habits and attitudes in ways that traditional segmentation fails to capture. Music taste can reflect subcultures that cross demographic lines, but it also works in the reverse direction. Even within a segment like Gen Z Latinas, music fandom can surface distinct subcommunities with meaningfully different consumer behavior."

–Jeff Rosenfeld, Chief Product Officer at MAX.

First Report: Consumer Attitudes Toward AI

Wavelength’s inaugural report examines consumer attitudes toward artificial intelligence, including the use of AI and social media as search alternatives, generational differences in AI adoption and sentiment, audience perceptions of generative AI, and attitudes toward AI in music creation.

The data reveals significant fractures in AI sentiment along generational, economic, and cultural lines. Among the findings: Gen Z consumers who use AI most frequently also express the most skepticism about its broader impact, and acceptance of AI-generated content varies substantially by music genre.

The full AI report is available for free at Wavelength.MAX.Live in an interactive, web-based format and a downloadable version, with presentation-ready graphics.

Upcoming Reports

Additional reports are scheduled for release over the coming months, with “State of the Music Industry” and “Gen Z: Generational Report” coming soon. Wavelength will also release industry specific reports across a range of fields, including Alcoholic Beverages, Clothing & Retail, Finance & Banking, Food & Beverage, Personal Care & Beauty, and Vehicles.

MAX and Wavelength will continue to announce additional report releases throughout the year and anyone interested can sign up on the Wavelength website to get notified when a new report is released: https://wavelength.max.live/reports.

About Music Audience Exchange (MAX):

MAX gives brands direct access to artists’ story, stage, and social presence. Grounded in the company’s proprietary Artist Matching Engine, MAX is backed by tech VCs and built by a team of data scientists, engineers, music pros, and media experts. MAX powers partnerships for top brands (like Ford, Rocket Mortgage, McDonald’s, AARP, US Marine Corps, and more) and supports a growing portfolio of 6,000+ artists (including Alicia Keys, Kane Brown, Jon Batiste, Eslabon Armado, Leela James, Lalah Hathaway, Justin Quiles, AJR, and Melissa Etheridge) with live engagement tools and promotional sponsorships.