Marketers have long sliced audiences by age, income, and browsing history. But what if the more predictive signal isn’t demographics—it’s what’s in someone’s headphones?

That’s the bet behind Wavelength, a new multi-category consumer trends platform from MAX (Music Audience Exchange). The company, known for matching brands with artists through its proprietary Artist Matching Engine™, is expanding into full-scale consumer research—this time with music taste at the center of the model.

The premise is straightforward: music fandom isn’t just cultural identity. It’s behavioral data.

From Artist Matching to Market Intelligence

MAX has spent years building infrastructure that connects fan bases to brand objectives. Its Artist Matching Engine™ segments audiences across more than 300 demographic, psychographic, sociographic, and behavioral attributes, powering partnerships with brands such as Ford Motor Company, McDonald's, and AARP.

Until now, that intelligence primarily supported brand-artist collaborations—matching campaigns to musicians whose audiences align with target consumers.

Wavelength extends that logic into a broader research platform. Instead of stopping at campaign alignment, MAX is productizing the audience patterns it observes across its ecosystem and making them available directly to marketers.

In other words, it’s turning music-driven segmentation into syndicated insight.

14,000 Consumers, With Cultural Depth

Wavelength is built on responses from more than 14,000 US consumers aged 13 to 64. The dataset includes deliberate oversampling of young Black and Latino respondents—a notable design choice that aims to surface cultural nuance often diluted in general-market studies.

The study spans age, gender, ethnicity, and income, and MAX says it incorporated layered validation and statistical testing to ensure reliability, even at narrow segment levels.

Attributes span major consumer categories, including:

• Automotive

• Finance and banking

• Beauty and personal care

• Travel

• Food and beverage

• Entertainment

The result, according to MAX, is a behavioral profile that goes beyond who consumers are to examine how they spend, what they watch, what platforms they trust, and how they feel about emerging technologies.

But the real differentiator is the music layer.

Why Music Changes the Segmentation Math

Traditional segmentation might treat “Gen Z” as a monolith. Wavelength argues that’s a strategic mistake.

A Gen Z country fan behaves differently from a Gen Z pop fan. An indie pop enthusiast may display distinct spending patterns from a mainstream hip-hop listener—even if they share the same age, ethnicity, and income bracket.

Music, MAX contends, surfaces subcultures that cut across demographic lines while also creating micro-communities within them.

Jeff Rosenfeld, Chief Product Officer at MAX, frames it this way: music acts as a proxy for consumer behavior. The communities formed around artists and genres shape attitudes, habits, and brand preferences in ways traditional segmentation models often miss.

For marketers navigating fragmented digital audiences, that nuance could be valuable—especially as identity becomes more interest-driven and less demographically defined.

The First Report: AI Sentiment Isn’t Monolithic

Wavelength’s inaugural release focuses on a topic dominating marketing conversations: artificial intelligence.

The first report analyzes:

• Consumer attitudes toward AI tools

• Use of AI and social media as search alternatives

• Generational differences in AI adoption

• Sentiment toward generative AI

• Perceptions of AI in music creation

The findings point to fractures along generational, economic, and cultural lines.

One notable insight: Gen Z consumers who use AI tools most frequently also express the highest levels of skepticism about AI’s broader societal impact. Meanwhile, acceptance of AI-generated content varies significantly by music genre fandom—suggesting that cultural affiliation influences tech sentiment.

That intersection—music taste influencing attitudes toward emerging technology—is precisely the kind of layered signal Wavelength is designed to expose.

The AI report is available free in both interactive web and downloadable formats, complete with presentation-ready graphics.

More Reports on the Way

MAX plans to expand Wavelength with additional releases in the coming months, including:

• “State of the Music Industry”

• “Gen Z: Generational Report”

• Industry-specific reports across alcoholic beverages, clothing and retail, finance, food and beverage, beauty, and automotive

The roadmap suggests Wavelength isn’t a one-off study but an ongoing research franchise.

The Bigger Picture: Culture as Data Infrastructure

The launch lands at a moment when brands are under pressure to move beyond surface-level targeting. Privacy shifts have weakened traditional tracking. Third-party cookies are fading. Demographic targeting feels blunt in an era defined by micro-communities.

Interest-based and cultural signals are increasingly filling that gap.

Platforms like TikTok and Spotify have already demonstrated how music and culture drive engagement ecosystems. What MAX is attempting is to formalize that intuition into structured, statistically validated research.

If Wavelength delivers actionable segmentation tied to measurable consumer behavior, it could become a strategic tool for brands looking to anchor campaigns in culture rather than just audience averages.

Because in a media landscape defined by fragmentation, knowing someone’s age is helpful.

Knowing their playlist might be better.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.