TWICE·Red Velvet, Melon August ‘Data Lab’ Summer Popular Songs and Artists Revealed

Melon has revealed the summer popular songs and artists, along with three music trend keywords based on DJ playlists and streaming data.

Kakao Entertainment's music platform Melon has announced the results of analyzing a total of 14,996 ‘summer’ tagged playlists created by 6,329 Melon DJs and streaming data through its music big data analysis content ‘Data Lab’. Based on Melon's cumulative data, the analysis of summer (June to August) summarized the summer music trend keywords as ‘girl groups’, ‘retro’, and ‘refreshing’.

▲ The summer song most included by Melon DJs, TWICE's ‘Dance The Night Away’

First, the ‘girl group’ trend was led by TWICE and Red Velvet. The most included summer music in the DJ playlist (based on the ‘summer’ tag) was TWICE's ‘Dance The Night Away’. A total of 1,181 Melon DJs included this song in 1,698 playlists, and including DJ playlists, 433,000 users streamed it over 1.655 million times this summer on Melon.

As of this year, the summer song most chosen by Melon DJs was KISS OF LIFE's ‘Sticky’, while H1-KEY's ‘It Was Summer’ and Bolbbalgan4's ‘Travel’ ranked second and third, respectively.

▲ Red Velvet, the most loved artist included by 32.3% of Melon DJs in summer playlists

While TWICE's ‘Dance The Night Away’ was the most included song in summer DJ playlists, the most loved artist was Red Velvet. 32.3% of all Melon DJs included Red Velvet's songs in their summer playlists, and this summer, one in four Melon DJs chose a Red Velvet summer song. Their representative songs, including ‘Red Flavor’, ‘Power Up’, and ‘Umpah Umpah’, have consistently received love for their refreshing vibe.

▲ ‘Beach Woman’∙’Airplane’∙’Cold Noodles’ and other summer classics from the 90s and 00s remain popular

The ‘retro’ trend was led by representative summer classics from the 1990s and 2000s. COOL's ‘Beach Woman’, released in 1997, proved its enduring popularity with 1.449 million streams this summer, while Turtle's ‘Airplane’ was played 3.418 million times, establishing itself as a representative summer song of the 2000s.

Songs representing summer were particularly concentrated in streaming from June to August. Based on cumulative streaming, ‘Beach Woman’ accounted for 54.2% of its total plays in summer, while Deuce's ‘In the Summer’ (49.5%), Um Jung-hwa's ‘Festival’ (44%), Myung Cardrive's ‘Cold Noodles’ (54.1%), Park Myung-soo's ‘Prince of the Sea’ (47.2%), and Indigo's ‘Summer! Please’ (59.3%) also recorded high streaming proportions during the summer.

Finally, it was revealed that refreshing songs by male idols saw a significant increase in listeners as summer approached. Notably, ATEEZ's ‘WAVE’ saw a 59.1% increase in listeners this summer compared to spring (March to May), while WINNER's ‘ISLAND’ increased by 47.5%, and Tomorrow X Together's ‘Our Summer’ rose by 36.2%.

A Melon representative stated, “This Data Lab examined the artists and songs representing summer through the users' voluntary human curation service, ‘Melon DJ’, and we hope you enjoy both human curation and AI-based curation services like ‘DJ Malang-i’ while overcoming the long and hot summer ahead.”

Meanwhile, Melon Data Lab is content that analyzes and records the proud records and meaningful achievements of domestic and international artists on a monthly basis. The full content of this Data Lab can be found in the ‘Magazine’ section of the Melon app and on Melon's official SNS channels.