Major album releases on streaming services by artists like Taylor Swift, Drake, and Bad Bunny have been linked to a rise in fatal car crashes in the United States.
The study, published on Monday in the medical journal JAMA Network Open, examined the ten albums with the most first-day Spotify streams between 2017 and 2022, including Taylor Swift’s Midnights, Drake’s Certified Lover Boy, and Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti. The study also included albums by Kendrick Lamar, Harry Styles, and Kanye West.
Although this data did not indicate whether listeners streamed the music in their car, the researchers found that the top 200 songs in the U.S. had streaming volumes 43% higher on the day of major album launches than on the days before the releases.
“What it establishes is that these days are genuinely different in terms of national engagement with music, which is the premise the whole study rests on,” said Patel.
The study examined a 10-day period before and after each album release. Using Spotify data, the researchers found that major album release days averaged 123.3 million streams, while days around the album’s release averaged 86.1 million. The researchers also examined drivers’ ages, alcohol use, the number of passengers in the vehicle, and the model year of the vehicles in fatal collisions.
On the days that the albums were released, around 15% more traffic fatalities occurred
According to the study, there were, on average, 121 fatal vehicle crashes on non-album release days, compared with 139 on album release days. Younger drivers also had fatal traffic accidents at a higher rate than senior drivers.
“What convinced me it was real was the pattern underneath it,” Patel told CNN. “The increase showed up mostly among drivers who were alone in the car, it was more pronounced among sober drivers than among drivers who had been drinking, and it wasn’t concentrated at night. If this were really about release parties and alcohol, you’d expect the opposite on all three counts.”
Patel told The Harvard Gazette that his own behavior after his wife texted him to listen to a song inspired the study.
He started looking through his phone, and a few moments later he realized he was swerving out of his lane. That’s when he concluded there must be a huge cumulative danger on the road if millions of others are doing the same thing on the day a major album drops.
“We don’t know for sure what the mechanism is here. Is it that the music is louder? Is it that it’s a new album, and people are just excited to hear it? Is it the mechanics of it all, meaning you’re fumbling around with your phone trying to download something?” said Dr. Anupam Jena, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a co-author of the study.
In conclusion, the researchers said the “study highlights how the potential impact of smartphone use on distracted driving can be assessed by studying changes in traffic fatalities during periods when smartphone use dramatically increases, leveraging plausibly exogenous variation in when rather than by whom smartphones are used.”