Wavelength Maps Consumer Trends to Music Fandom

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb 25, 2026--

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.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260225355974/en/

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.

AboutMAX (Music Audience Exchange):

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.

Wavelength™ by MAX is a comprehensive, free consumer trends study revealing how Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers differ across brand loyalty, purchase decisions, values, and cultural identity — with music taste as the decoder.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian delegation will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoys in the run-up to another round of trilateral talks with Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday.

Rustem Umerov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, is due to hold talks with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on Thursday in Geneva, Zelenskyy told reporters.

A U.S. push for peace has already brought Russia and Ukraine to the table in Abu Dhabi and Geneva this year, but the talks have produced no breakthrough on key differences as Russia’s invasion of its neighbor enters its fifth year.

Thursday’s meeting will address details of a possible postwar recovery plan for Ukraine and discuss preparations for an upcoming trilateral meeting with Moscow officials, Zelenskyy said, adding that he has also tasked Umerov with discussing a possible prisoner exchange.

Ukraine expects the U.S.-brokered talks with Russia to take place next week, Zelenskyy said.

Witkoff said Tuesday he would meet Umerov in Geneva for talks that could be followed by a trilateral meeting in Florida.

The Swiss city is also expected to host a round of nuclear talks on Thursday between the United States and Iran.

Previous talks with Russia and Ukraine have largely resolved the question of security guarantees, Witkoff said. Both sides are engaging with the peace efforts, with almost daily conversations taking place between officials, he said.

Washington is not pressuring Ukraine to concede on any point, and the Russians have shown “some moderation,” Witkoff told the Yalta European Strategy — an international annual leaders’ forum organized by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in Kyiv.

On Tuesday, amid events marking the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion, Zelenskyy noted that Russia has not defeated Ukraine nor broken the Ukrainian spirit, despite Moscow's bigger and better equipped army and heavy bombardment of civilian areas.

Ukrainian forces have in recent months pushed Russia’s army back at points along the roughly 1,250-kilometer (750-mile) front line in eastern areas of the country, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

The “significant gains” are the biggest since 2024, the Washington-based think tank said, though they are unlikely to grow into major offensives as Ukraine struggles with a troop shortage. Even so, they likely will disrupt Russian plans for a spring-summer offensive, it said.

Ukraine has also continued its almost nightly long-range drone barrage of military and allied infrastructure targets deep inside Russia.

The U.S. State Department has expressed its displeasure with Ukraine’s recent attacks on the ⁠Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea that have impacted U.S. oil interests in ⁠Kazakhstan, Kyiv’s chief envoy to Washington said Tuesday.

A Ukrainian drone attack on the Dorogobuzh fertilizer plant in western Russia’s Smolensk region killed seven workers, injured 10 people and caused a fire, Gov. Vasily Anokhin said.

Ukrainian authorities said Russia attacked with 115 drones overnight, including one strike on a village in the southern Zaporizhzhia district that killed four people and injured a child, the State Emergency Service said.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

A woman sits in front of a grave of her relative during memorial service for fallen Ukrainian soldiers during a ceremony to mark the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Bucha, Ukraine, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

Relatives of those killed during the Russian occupation react at the Wall of Remembrance during a ceremony to mark the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Bucha, Ukraine, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)