Tracking the sound of Isla Vista: Examining I.V. band audiences and follower bases through Spotify metrics

Thursday June 26, 2025 at 2:00 p.m.

With over 678 million global users, Spotify hails as the most popular music streaming service for artists and listeners alike. Since its launch in 2008, many musicians have grown their fan base through Spotify. Notable acts from Isla Vista on Spotify include EDM artist Steve Aoki, who headlined Extravaganza 2024, reggae rock band Rebelution and singer-songwriter Jack Johnson.

Today, many bands from I.V. use Spotify to host their discographies for avid listeners to discover. They often perform original music and covers live at band parties or various events around I.V. to grow their audience and promote their music. Instagram accounts such as @soundsofiv help promote these local concerts.

Allison Corwin, bassist of The Framers and fourth-year psychological & brain sciences major, stressed the importance of these live shows to grow their audience.

“Our live shows are our greatest strength by far,” Corwin said. “We pride ourselves on being able to reproduce every part of every song live without backing tracks. We also make sure to play every show like it’s in front of a thousand people. That mindset has helped us grow our fanbase exponentially, more than just online engagement.”

All the members of Cordoba — UC Santa Barbara alumni Charles Silver, Marlowe Kushner, Wally Corngold and Gabriel Cohen — expressed a shared sentiment about the value of live performances. Cohen reflected on the band’s experience with digital platforms.

Although the band has experimented with platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, these “don’t compare to live shows,” Cohen said. “People resonate with live shows.”

Attendees of these concerts shared these feelings as well. Third-year computer science major Srinidhi Sathish highlighted the best parts about going to these events.

“My favorite part of going to band parties is definitely just hearing music I love with my friends in amazing locations and the community that comes with it,” Sathish explained. “I love heading there with my friends and listening to songs that I typically don’t hear at other parties, from 70s throwbacks to modern indie to rock classics, which all sound so amazing live.”

These local shows offer more than just entertainment — they expose audiences to a wide range of musical styles, a defining feature of I.V.’s vibrant and eclectic culture.

“I.V.’s music scene is so unique in that there is something for everyone, no matter what you enjoy listening to,” Sathish continued. “There are also so many places to hear live music and there’s always an audience of people who stop to listen, which really highlights the best parts of I.V.’s slow and relaxing style of life.”

Scraping the Spotify Application Programming Interface (API), a tool within Spotify that allows for the retrieval of Spotify-specific data, revealed that none of the bands analyzed had a classified genre — highlighting I.V.’s distinctive music scene. Many local groups blend multiple styles and influences, crafting sounds that are difficult to categorize but rich in personality.

For The Framers, that mix is both intentional and expressive.

“We’d describe [The Framers] as a riot [grrrl] indie punk band with a beachy undertone, and our sound is really shaped by a mix of artists we love,” Corwin explained. “We mix riot [grrrl] energy with indie punk, keeping it raw but still catchy. It’s honest, loud and all about figuring things out as you go.”

Other bands, like Cordoba, lean into a more relaxed, groove-driven approach that emphasizes rhythm and live energy. All four members come from different musical backgrounds, contributing to their unique sound.

“I think all four of us come from pretty different musical backgrounds, both with regard to what we play, as well as just generally what we like to listen to … but we definitely lean into certain directions of groups that we like to listen to collectively that have an influence on our sound as a whole,” Silver explained.

This blend of influences can sometimes make Cordoba’s music hard to categorize, but it consistently centers around rhythm and movement.

“We have a lot of difficulty sometimes describing our sounds, but if we had to explain it, we often say it’s heavily groove-based,” Cohen added. “We’re all very oriented towards live performance and having people, you know, dancing … so there’s a lot of movement, a lot of different fields that we kind of explore with our sounds.”

Second-year statistics and data science major Rachna Bokka commented on how these live performances also build recognition for the bands.

“It’s always nice to see the same [bands] at times,” Bokka said. “It’s just nice to recognize a band when you see them over again.”

To gauge how popular or recognizable a certain artist is, Spotify calculates a popularity score from 1-100 based on the general popularity of the artist’s discography. For example, Extravaganza 2025 headliner Chris Lake has a popularity score of 71 while Kendrick Lamar, the headliner for Extravaganza 2013, has a popularity score of 95.

The music scene in I.V., however, serves as a launchpad for emerging bands, with popularity scores all below 20 — a reflection of the area’s deep roots in underground culture, its embrace of niche talent and a community that values authenticity and individuality over everything else.

“We want to be authentic and show our personalities when we’re promoting our music or just promoting [Cordoba] and our image on social media,” Kushner explained. “So something that we definitely focus on a lot is just trying to be ourselves and trying to not take anything like that too seriously because, at the end of the day, what’s important to us is obviously the music and the creativity.”

This emphasis on personality and originality is crucial when building a core fanbase for these bands.

“I feel like that’s just so obvious and see-through when people are, I don’t know, trying,” Kushner added. “If your music or your product is [bad], then you can have the coolest Instagram ever, but no one’s gonna really care.”

The Framers echoed a similar commitment to authenticity when creating online content.

“In order to express our identity and overall vibe, we stick to posting content that feels authentic to us and our individual interests,” Corwin said. “It’s easy to feel pressured to perfectly curate your online presence, but sometimes you just have to get silly with it. We also never want to just pump out social media posts for the sake of hopping on a trend.”

According to these bands, social media, while important to connect with fans, should not be the sole focus of a band trying to grow.

“Social media is so finicky. Sometimes it feels easy, other times it feels impossible to figure out what will work,” Corwin added. “Social media is definitely useful for giving your audience deeper insight into what makes you or your band special, but big numbers online aren’t everything.”

Staying authentic has paid off for bands like The Framers and Cordoba — not just in praise, but in growing recognition. The Framers have amassed 990 followers on Spotify as of May 26, 2025 — the most among all the bands analyzed — while Cordoba has recently taken their groove-driven sound from I.V. to stages like the 2025 Shabang Music Festiva in San Luis Obispo and Nublu in New York, where they hope to expand their reach.

According to Corwin, what sets The Framers apart isn’t just their sound — it’s the undeniable charisma and chemistry each member brings to the stage.

“Our individual personalities really shine through on stage. People often tell us that they could watch any single band member at any time and be completely entertained,” Corwin said. “We love our fans, and we love meeting new people every night.”

For Cordoba, growth as a band isn’t just about performing. Rather, it is more about staying emotionally connected to the music they create.

“Being in the music that you’re playing, no matter what that vibe is — it can be good, angry, happy, sad, whatever … just be emotionally invested in it,” Corngold said. “It’s something you work so hard to come up with, so treat it as such and don’t be afraid to really connect with it.”

In a music scene defined by experimentation, passion and community, that kind of connection is what sets I.V. apart — and what keeps both artists and audiences coming back.

“The more that you invest into your music, the more you’ll get out and the more the audience will feel that,” Corngold said.

A version of this article appeared on p.12 and p.13 in the May 29, 2025 print edition of the Daily Nexus.