Barbenheimer: How Music Catalogues Can Leverage Cultural Moments

In recent memory, no dual film release has created such a cultural phenomenon as Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Dubbed ‘Barbenheimer’, these event films have led to numerous memes, headlines, and social media banter owing to their extreme tonal contrasts.

But beyond the comical contrast of these films, there’s an important lesson for music catalogue owners. Every cultural wave, from memes to movies, presents an opportunity for you to repackage your content in ways that capture the moment and resonate with the ever-shifting tastes of your audience.

Telling Stories with Tags

Music tagging is an efficient way to understand your catalogue. But this should just be a starting point. The real power of this practice lies in how you use the information afterwards. And you can get creative with your use cases. 

Music catalogue owners can be storytellers. The narrative doesn’t stop once you’ve tagged your catalogue. Tagging information creates a dynamic database you can constantly leverage to craft engaging tales, including ones that capture the zeitgeist.

Capitalising on Cultural Moments

The world is always evolving, and with it, the stories we can tell.

Every week offers a fresh array of cultural happenings – a film release, a viral YouTube video, or a breakout TikTok trend. These moments are ripe for musical alignment. They present an opportunity for you to frame your most relevant tracks in a playlist that taps into the moment.

Instead of presenting ‘Top Hits’ tracks, tell a story with catalogue selections and guide your audience down a specific emotional pathway. The tags become more than descriptors; they become narratives. These playlists are a great way to show off tracks and are more relatable for your audience.

This is where Barbenheimer can serve as an example. Rather than merely categorising tracks within genre- or mood-based collections such as “pop” or “dramatic,” imagine the impact of curating a playlist inspired by Barbie’s exuberance or Oppenheimer’s gravitas.

Listen for Yourself 

We couldn’t resist giving this a go ourselves. 

For Barbie, we curated a playlist of confident and dancy, electro pop tracks.

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For Oppenheimer, we curated a playlist of electronic, ambient, and classical tracks with a mysterious, dark, and inspiring quality.

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Have a listen and let us know what you think. Which do you prefer, Barbie or Oppenheimer? Either way, there’s always a playlist waiting to be curated and a story waiting to be told. 

And whether you’re riding the Barbenheimer wave or the next cultural phenomenon, the key is to stay attuned and craft playlists that resonate and inspire.

Interested in more Barbenheimer? Check out Musiio by SoundCloud’s blogs on Barbie’s hyper-positive soundtrack and Ludwig Göranssen’s emotive Oppenheimer score.

To learn more about how our AI can supercharge your playlisting and music curation efforts, reach out to sales@musiio.com.

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