Interest in Billie Eilish has dropped during lockdown, new study claims

According to the data, people have been gravitating towards more traditional cultural spheres like classical music and Russian literature

A new study has shed some light on people's listening habits during lockdown, with interest in pop sensation Billie Eilish down 11 per cent.

Conducted by recommendation engine TasteDive, the study revealed that interest was growing in more traditional spheres of culture.

For example, Jazz trumpet icon Louis Armstrong has experienced a rise in interest of almost 19 per cent from the pre-lockdown days.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy saw a boost of 11 per cent, while interest in contemporary novels Eat Pray Love and The Goldfinch dropped by 12 and 10 per cent respectively.

The study took into account nearly 80 million "taste signals" - recommendation requests, likes, dislikes, saves and searches - from midway through March to late April, contrasting the data with comparable activity from last year.

For TV, sports and travel programmes predictably suffered big drops - of 33 per cent and 28 percent - while interest in news and health-related programmes rose. Classical music rose 13 per cent, while blues and jazz picked up by 9 per cent.

Alex Elias, the CEO of Qloo (which owns TasteDive), said: "We see a pattern across books and movies and even TV shows in which a lot of period pieces [are] starting to surge - people yearn to be transported to different times."

“People want content that isn’t disposable,” he continued. “Seeing genres like classical music surge speaks to that. And with the rise of jazz and blues, we can speculate, those genres are all about confronting complexity and pain—rather than shying away from it—and turning it into something beautiful.”