Is the 2K Throwback Revival Really a Thing?
Some prominent Top 40 stations have embraced the Pop, Rhythmic, and Hip Hop hits Millennials grew up with. Why isn’t the 2K Throwbacks format working? Spotify data may have clues.
Last Spring, Miami’s legendary Power 96 (WPOW) gave up on current music and fully embraced the previous two decades. It’s a growing trend of stations bringing back the Pop, Dance, Hip Hop, and R&B bangers that adult Millennials remember from their youth. Instead of Kendrick Lamar, Sabrina Carpenter, or Bad Bunny, you’ll now hear Pitbull, Usher and Jay-Z, along with 2Pac and Notorious B.I.G, on Power 96.
Chicago’s B96 (WBBM-FM) still plays current hits, but after almost half a century of promoting the today part, B96 now emphasize, “The Music You've Always Loved.” Nelly, Beyonce, and Missy Elliott are among the artists B96 brought back with the switch in 2023.
In 2022, L.A.’s legendary Hip Hop station Power 106 (KPWR) shifted to “Today’s Hits and Throwbacks,” with half of the station’s songs from artists such as 50 Cent, Dr. Dre, and Sean Paul.
Finally, one of the earliest to embrace the Millennial Throwbacks trend was Sacramento’s Kiss 107.9, a station iHeart Radio launched on the frequency former Top 40 station The End abandoned for—reasons---playing “The Best Variety From the 90s and 2000s.” Artists include The Black Eyed Peas, Katy Perry, Eminem, Usher, and Bruno Mars.
The results are mixed.
Power 96 increased its audience share by 80 percent since last spring. They’re now beating former Top 40 competitor Y100 (WHYI) and contemporary Hip Hop leader 99 JAMZ in Miami, a unique market where Spanish-language and Soft Rock stations dominate.
Others haven’t fared so well.
L.A.’s Power 106’s ratings haven’t improved and consistently trail contemporary Hip Hop competitor Real 92.3.
Likewise, Chicago’s B96’s audience share didn’t improve. They only have about half the listenership Pop-oriented hit music station 103.5 Kiss-FM (WKSC) has. B96 also trails the leading Hip Hop station 107.5 WGCI by 30 percent.
Finally, after almost three years playing Throwbacks, Sacramento’s Kiss-107.9 trails Adult-oriented Top 40 NOW 100.5, the station Kiss 107.9 was designed to beat. (In fact, NOW 100.5’s ratings actually improved slightly since 2022.) Kiss-FM also trails 106.5 The End (KUDL), a Top 40 station, and current Hip Hop 102.5 KSFM.
Undoubtedly, these stations’ corporate owners invested in expensive perceptual market research before blowing up these legendary brands in major markets.
That research probably noted that the oldest millennials, now in their mid-30s to early 40s, have reached the time-honored age of giving up on being hip and going all in on the music of their formative years from 20 years ago. After all, those Millennials are now the same age the Baby Boomers were when The Big Chill brought back 60s Oldies.
They didn’t even need the research to know that 35- to 49-year-still listen to radio a lot more than 18- to 35-year-olds do these days.
No matter what, the research said it was a good move.
So why isn’t it working?
One reason may simply be that while Millennials like the idea of all Throwbacks, there aren’t enough songs that enough people actually love to create a winning radio format.
This post is the third in a four-part series exploring the most popular classics on Spotify, specifically, those songs from the past six decades that fans stream as often as they do today’s hits—specifically, the Classics that make the Spotify 200 chart.
Of the four genres of classics, fans play those Pop and Rhythmic hits from the 2000s and 2010s dramatically less often than they play Classic Oldies from the 60s, 70s and 80s, or the Alternative Classics from the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.
(There’s another genre of classics that beat them all, but I’ll reveal that one in my next post.)
Furthermore, when fans do play Millennial 2K Classics, they typically do so in response to four categories of current events. Let’s dive in to what 2K Throwback Classics Spotify users played the most in 2024:
#1: Artists who released new material.
Bruno Mars is the big winner here. He had two massive hits with "Die with a Smile" with Lady Gaga and "Apt." with K-Pop star Rosé, He began a successful performance series in Las Vegas in February 2024 and a huge New Year’s Eve performance.
These four Bruno Mars classics have all spent multiple weeks in the Spotify 200 coinciding with his Vegas performances; “Locked out of Heaven”, “That's What I Like” , “Just the Way You Are”, and “When I Was Your Man”.
Eminem also briefly returned “Without Me” after releasing The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), featuring the short-lived radio hit "Houdini".
However, Eminem would boost streams of his heyday hits far more from our second category that brings back the Throwbacks:
#2: Superbowl Halftime Shows
When Eminem performed at the 2022 halftime show, “Without Me” returned to the Spotify 200 for 16 weeks, compared to only two weeks for its aforementioned ’24 comeback:
“The Real Slim Shady” made a massive comeback in 2022, but did not return to the Spotify 200 in 2024. Likewise, “Lose Yourself” returned after the ’22 halftime show, but not after Eminem’s ’24 album release.
When Usher performed at the 2024 halftime show, five of his biggest hits returned to the Spotify 200 chart. Yeah!“ (featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris) racked up 21 weeks alongside today’s big hits.
However, Usher’s four other revivals, including “My Boo” (with Alicia Keys), “DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love” (with Pitbull), “Hey Daddy (Daddy's Home)”, and Usher’s colab with Young Jeezy “Love in This Club,” all only reached the Spotify 200 for the one single week following the halftime show.
Finally, Rihanna’s halftime in appearance in 2023 brought “Needed Me” back to the Spotify 200 that February for four weeks and “We Found Love” (with Calvin Harris) for three weeks. Both songs also spent a solitary week in the Spotify 200 in early 2024.
Rihanna brings back another hit for a different week for a different reason.
#3: Holidays
You probably don’t peg Rhianna and Britney Spears as the Bobby Picketts of the 2Ks, but Halloween revelers think “Disturbia” and “Toxic” fit the mood. Both titles found their way into the Spotify 200 during the last week of October:
Meanwhile, Miley Cyrus’s “Party In The U.S.A.” and Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” are among the feel good classics Americans stream the week of Independence Day.
#4 Movie Syncs:
2024’s biggest Pop Throwback by far is Natasha Bedingfield’s” Unwritten.” It spent 35 weeks in the Spotify 200 last year after the romcom Anyone But You featured the song.
That leaves just one song whose resurgence I can’t peg to a current event:
After a brief appearance in late July, Gorillaz’ “Feel Good Inc.” returned to the Spotify 200 in November 2024 and again after the holidays in January 2025.
A genre with no depth?
What do you do when listeners like the “idea” a music format, but there aren’t very many songs within the genre that they actually love?
How does that even happen?
When a radio station hires a professional research firm to figure out if they should launch a new music format, the researchers will ask potential listeners to evaluate the concept as a whole, as well as rate a few different subgenres of music that the station might play. They do so by playing listeners brief montages of three to five song snippets representing specific styles and eras of music.
If the research reveals enough people are interested in the proposed format, the station will then use the perceptual research’s findings about which styles and eras of music garner the most interest to build a playlist of a few hundred songs.
Once the new format has been on the air for a while, the station will—if they still have money in the research budget—conduct a music test to fine tune its playlist.
In the Before Times, stations paid about 100 listeners to come to a hotel ballroom for the evening listen to a few hundred song snippets, and mark on a bubble form if they know the song and how much they like it, as if they were all taking the SAT together. Nowadays, listeners do it on their own online.
It is extremely rare for a station to actually conduct a music test before launching the format.
I haven’t seen what any of these station’s 100-listener music test revealed, but I have seen what America’s 83 million Spotify users are playing. The fact is, they’re not playing that many 2K Throwbacks.
The Takeaway for Radio Programmers
What does the lack of 2K Throwbacks among Spotify’s most-played Classics mean?
First, it doesn’t mean there is no appetite at all for 2K Throwbacks. It simply confirms that there aren’t enough songs that enough listeners love to sustain a successful 24/7 radio format.
Second, it doesn’t mean there will never be an appetite for 2K Throwbacks. As the 2000s and 2010s become farther behind us and the folks who grew up with these songs become older, songs that are merely mid today could become beloved bangers tomorrow.
For readers who are radio programmers, here’s the lesson: When considering a specific genre or era of music, don’t simply trust how exciting listeners find your proposed format in perceptual research: Make sure there are enough highly popular songs to actually sustain your format.
My final post in this series exploring the biggest Classics on Spotify will explore that mystery genre above. You won’t hear most of them on FM radio, but your teenager probably loves them!
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Date source for this post:
Spotify Charts (weeks of 1/3/2019 through 2/28/2025 for the USA): https://charts.spotify.com/charts/overview/us