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One Step Closer Announce New Album ‘Zero’, Drop New Songs

Konstantinos Pappis
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One Step Closer Announce New Album ‘Zero’, Drop New Songs

One Step Closer have announced a new album called Zero. The follow-up to 2024’s All You Embrace drops on February 19 via Run for Cover. It’s led by the songs ‘Blue Hour’ and ‘Was It Ever Enough?’, the first of which starts out shadowy and contemplative in a way the band has rarely sounded before. Take a listen below.

The new album was recorded by longtime collaborator Jon Markson (Drug Church, The Story So Far, Drain, Koyo). “This may have been the hardest year for us, and that’s reflected in the songs” vocalist Ryan Savitski said in a statement. “There’s so much desperation on this record but I think people can relate to that–these songs will always mean something different to me than everyone else, no one is living the same exact experiences, but I want people to take these songs and mold them to fit their own.”

Zero Cover Artwork:

Zero Cover Artwork

Zero Tracklist:

1. Numb With Sleep
2. Until You Bloom
3. About a Boy
4. August
5. Blue Hour
6. Write My Wrongs
7. Drowning Skies
8. Was It Ever Enough?
9. A Fleeting Face
10. “For Them”

Artist Spotlight: Sadurn

Konstantinos Pappis
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Artist Spotlight: Sadurn

Sadurn is a Philadelphia band that began in 2017 as a solo outlet for G DeGroot. Joined by guitarist Jon Cox, drummer Amelia Swain, and bassist Tabitha Ahnert, they laid down their 2022 debut album, Radiator, at an isolated cabin in the Poconos with collaborator Heather Jones (aka ther). While DeGroot already had new songs in the works, a host of medical issues, including chronic pain, gut problems, and issues with their voice, started intensifying in the wake of the album’s release through Run for Cover. Most of the recording for its follow-up, The Underworld, took place in January 2024, when they once again rented a house in Poconos, though they needed to take a break and go back on the road before finally completing it. Arduous as the process may have been, it positively sounds like a group settling into songs they’ve lived with for a while, from the pedal steel that accentuates Cox’s guitar playing to the fiddle that draws the record to a close. In moving through a perpetual cycle of pain and yearning, it doesn’t wear the listener out so much as foster a space where they can warmly coexist, both intimately weighty and free-wheeling in nature. “I’m afraid that the way down is a long one,” DeGroot sings, a fear that never prevents The Underworld from coaxing itself upward.

We caught up with Sadurn’s G DeGroot for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about following up their debut album, dealing with medical issues, the idea of destiny, and more.

I know there were a lot of stops and starts in the process of making The Underworld. How much did the feeling that it was due colour each time you went back into it?

That was definitely present the whole time. I think what that had the biggest effect on was probably the writing process, because it’s not really good as an artist to feel like there’s any pressure around something coming out. And I had never before been in that situation where I was writing songs knowing that there was already an expectation of what they were going towards, like an album, and there was already an audience because we had another album out. But we recorded most of the album in January 2024; some of the songs I was writing before Radiator even came out. There’s the pressure, but there were also other uncontrollable forces at work when it came to moving things through. Like, I had a long-term vocal injury that prevented us from recording.

Are you comfortable talking about the physical challenges you dealt with around that time? To what extent do you think they stemmed from that pressure?

For me, all of the physical issues that I had that started to mount as we started touring the first record had to do with the internal pressure of feeling like I needed to be perfect, I guess. It’s kind of a funny way of putting it, but I truly believe that all of the health issues and vocal health issues that came in a cascade following the escalation of this situation of being on stage and performing and being visible – there were other things happening in my personal life that added to the intensity of the moment for me, but I was experiencing chronic pain in my hands and arms where I couldn’t play guitar sometimes or do basic things. I was experiencing a lot of other health issues, some of which overlapped with my vocal health. And that just made it hard to tour. To me, these things are all related. They’re not separate. 

I’m just gonna be honest, it’s almost like an arms race of external validation. For me, it felt like this band and doing this thing was a way for me to be safe. This was my future and my identity. It gave me a sense of self-worth and value, and I felt so deeply afraid of failing. I felt like this was our one chance as our dreams were happening. There’s a lot of pressure to just push and push and do and say yes to everything and do all of this. Touring is hard before you’re a band that actually makes any money – you’re sleeping on couches and floors, and you’re getting up really early and going to bed really late just to get to the next place and play. You’re getting sick and playing shows with a fever. It’s pretty intense.

We’re all trained to believe that making it as an artist is the best possible thing that could happen to you, and you should definitely do it at all costs. It’s funny, we started touring and I started meeting all of these other bands that we were touring with, and there were so many of these people – especially the frontperson of the band, weirdly – who would have these autoimmune disorders and vocal health challenges, and while they were on tour, they had to compromise so much. And I’m like, “This is so weird! Why is this so ubiquitous?” Essentially what I believe is that your body will tell you when you should stop, but if you believe that you shouldn’t stop or you can’t stop, then that’s going to lead to a breakdown physically. 

So that’s what had to happen for me. I wanted to put out a new record soon. I wanted to share more songs. I wanted to keep doing it. But it was tied too much to my feeling of safety and self-worth, and that became the reason that I was pushing. It was like a feeling of scarcity. That’s a better way of saying it – sorry, it took a long time to get there, but I was basically doing it with a feeling of scarcity. And I don’t think everyone does it that way, but a lot of people do. That’s kind of how capitalism works, on this idea of scarcity. You either get the opportunity or you miss it. You either take it and push yourself to do this thing, or you’re going to miss it and fall behind.

It’s actually really interesting for me right now to be going back into this stuff, because when health and vocal health things took me out of it definitively, it gave me the chance to rewrite my sense of self and my sense of what actually made me safe and whole and worthy. I basically had to learn that chasing that was not going to be the real solution to that, that I actually needed to build up an internal feeling of those things. That’s what this journey kind of allowed me to do. That’s what I was doing in the time that this record wasn’t being made or coming out.

I understand a lot of this boils down to the visibility of being an artist, and I wonder if you can expand on how this affected the invisible parts of it – not just your internal questioning but the songwriting itself; things that are more private to that identity.

Thanks for asking that. I think it did make it slower for me to write. I don’t think that it affected the songs themselves too much, because that space of making songs is so sacred for me. When I’m in that space of writing a song, it is just for me. But I think that having the pressure of creating an album made it harder to get into that space. So it was just less often, or less consistently, that I was able to get into that space and stay in that space. The space itself of where I write songs wasn’t corrupted, it was just harder to access. When you’re making something, no matter whether it’s a song or anything else – which, I think everyone should write songs – it’s about communing with yourself. It’s not about communing with yourself and wondering how that’s going to look to other people. If someone else is in the room evaluating, or even someone in your head, you’re not really communing with yourself.

In the bio, you mention that songwriting is “a place where you can circle back to your own truth.” That sounds like a good thing written down, but I suspect that there are moments of struggle or frustration, in some way, when you find yourself circling back to the same truths. Do you feel like that cycle ever manifests in a negative way?

I do think that it’s always a positive thing to go to your truth. I think a lot of times it means going through layers of pain. And I think that’s a positive thing, because if you’re feeling and looking at that, then that’s how you actually move through it. If you’re not looking and touching down onto it, then it’s just getting shoved down, affecting you in other ways. The way you’re talking about that makes me think about, on the album, the song ‘why does my heart’, which is about that – a lot of the album is about this feeling of not being able to move on from a relationship. In that sense, a lot of the feelings that I was moving through that end up on this record are about coming back to what I really feel and where I’m really at, and realizing that this person was still just at the center of… It can be frustrating when you feel like your brain wants to move on from something, but your heart has not done that. That’s why I ended up with so many songs about it.

It’s a complicated feeling, because it’s like, I would like to be free from this, but I’m not, and there’s layers to that. It’s not just frustrated; it’s also just like, I’m still in love. And so, ‘why does my heart’ cycles between these different chord progressions with the same phrase. One is frustrated, like, “Why does my heart always lead me back to you?” Like, I can’t do anything about this, I’m powerless to it. And the other one is kind of accepting. There’s so many dimensions to those feelings.

When I saw that quote, I was thinking of the line about having “a head full of planets circling my one desire” from ‘never tell me’. That’s one of my favorites on the record, partly because I feel like it paints a picture of that one desire as a solar system as opposed to something one-dimensional. Maybe I was curious about the negative implications of that creatively, because one layer of this pain that you sing about is that it tends to dull everything out. I was wondering how this numbness can act as a barrier to writing.

Yes, because when we are numbed out, it’s because there’s something that’s painful and there’s parts of us that want to protect us from that, and so they numb us out. That can look like so many things. It can look like looking at your phone, or just dissociating in different ways, or substances and other things that could be worse, more disruptive. But when we’re numbing out, we’re fundamentally not connected to what’s actually happening, and there’s a reason for it. It’s designed that way. The numbness is designed to protect you from something that’s really challenging. But it’s only by being in touch with the thing that’s challenging that you can move through it. Songwriting is in that place where you’re in touch with what’s happening for you. If things are too painful to be in touch with, then good luck writing a song. But you can write about being numbed out, because that is a way to get back in touch. First you can acknowledge, “Oh, I’m numbed out.” That’s like your trailhead, that’s your way back into what you’re feeling. It’s really important, because that is a feeling in itself.

It’s one thing connecting to put pen to paper and writing something in the moment, and it’s another thing staying connected throughout the whole process to that original feeling. I wanted to ask about that in relation to the gap between the first sessions and the last, and through the mixing process. How did that time affect your connection to the songs?

It’s hard. When it comes to the whole process of making a song, the time that you feel the most alive with it is the moment that it comes out of you. I’ve heard this Alex G quote about this, too, where he talks about how when he’s producing a song, creating the recording, it feels like it gets further and further and further away from that raw first moment of when it was coming out and he first demoed it. It’s not just linear like that; there are so many really beautiful moments that happen in the recording process. That’s its own creative process, especially because it’s with my friends. When they add their parts to a song, or when we play it live to track the song together – like, when we were playing ‘the weight’ and Jon ripped this amazing solo that we kept in the song, that just took it to a new place. There are parts along the way that are inspiring and giving even more life to something.

I would say mixing and mastering… not so much. Mixing and mastering have always been some of my least favorite – shout out to Mark [Watters], who mixed this record, because it’s a painful process for me, and he made it as painless as it could be. When you’re mixing, you have to put on your critical ears, so you’re taken out of just feeling it and appreciating it, because your job is to be listening to it critically. I always go through a phase when making an album in mixing where I completely hate it. [laughs] The thing is, I just have to know that that’s what happens to me. I’m going to go through this phase where I don’t like a single thing, and it feels like nails on a chalkboard. I don’t think it’s just me, but that’s a consistent reality for me, and I just have to take a break from it for a while.

Unfortunately, towards the end of making a record is when I feel the least connected to it, because you’ve distended your energy on this thing, and I’m like, “I just want to write songs. I don’t want to record, I don’t want to mix, I don’t want to master, I just want to write songs. Why am I even doing this?” So part of me is just relieved that we’re putting this record out. I want to go back to the part of being an artist that I really identify with, which is writing songs.

In terms of the recording, do you have a vocal performance on the album that you’re really proud of? ‘why does my heart’ is especially moving to me.

I’m glad you say that. That was just a practice take. I had just written the song within weeks of when we recorded it, right before the recording session, January 2024, so it was new to us. We were figuring out how we wanted to play it, with what instruments, so we just set up one mic in the middle of the room, and we were just all around it. We did a few takes with different instruments, and that was just one of the practice takes, and we just kept it. We were like, “What if it was just this? What if we just didn’t try harder on this?” The only thing is we added little pieces of Dobro after the fact, super subtle. But other than that, it’s this one mono take. It’s vulnerable to do that, so it means a lot. I like to have a mix of those things – some vocals are live on the record and some vocals are more comped, trying to get the best version of it.

For me, ‘the whole thing’ is one of the funnest songs to sing. I’m fundamentally a singer – before any of this, I just like to sing – so it just feels good to do that. I love doing harmony arrangements, so I got to add a bunch on that song.

As a whole, The Underworld is so wrapped up in the idea of destiny, which you directly address on the closing track. I’m sure your feelings around a lot of things have kind of changed since writing these songs, and I wonder if you speak to whether that’s true about fate, the way it registers in you.

I think it’s something that I struggle with, and that’s documented in all of these songs. I think that sometimes a connection – a romantic connection – can open up whole dimensions of reality for both of you, that you feel like you can only access through that person or that relationship. And those new dimensions of this magical reality feel like the most real, important, meaningful, beautiful thing. It can be hard to imagine that you’re supposed to do anything except move towards it. It feels like, without that, things are just flat.

I think that we live in a very magical reality. The way reality works is really squishy, and I’ve come to know that a lot more intimately since writing those songs. I think I always knew it, but my experience of metaphysical reality has expanded a lot in the past couple of years.Something that was really important for me to do was to rediscover that that magical layer of reality was something that was actually fundamental to me and how I experienced things, and that I didn’t need any other person in particular to experience that. I do think that if we’re really in love with someone, that probably doesn’t go away. I don’t necessarily feel like I’m ever going to not feel that way about that relationship that I wrote about so much. But what I did discover is that I have access to my own magic, and that I could reclaim that, and that I needed to put myself at the center of my destiny, so to speak. Someone else can’t be at the center of that for you. 

Tying this back to the idea of musical destiny, something that comes up in these interviews is identifying the moment you first realized you’re meant to be doing this. But I understand that’s a realization that recurs, that you also circle back around, and I wonder if you can share the last time you remember having that thought.

I hope this isn’t too preachy – I just believe that, if you’re curious or excited about something, that is your destiny. If you are curious about it, if you’re excited about it, if you feel genuine desire to do something – it doesn’t matter if it’ll make you money, or if it’ll earn you anything, or if anyone will look at it or like it at all – none of that matters. If you feel curious, or excited, or it makes you feel connected to yourself, then that is your destiny. I think we are meant – born – with things that we’re meant to do, and I think that that feeling of curiosity and excitement and enlivenment is the compass towards those things, so it doesn’t really matter whether we think that we’re that good at them, or whether they’re gonna do anything – this or that for our life to make us secure, or have a reputation. I really think it’s just about whether we feel that internal little fluttering about wanting to do it. That means it’s your destiny. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

Sadurn’s The Underworld is out October 16 via Run for Cover.

SEO in 2027 and How to Measure Visibility When AI Answers Reduce Traditional Search Clicks

Our Culture Mag & Partners
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SEO in 2027 and How to Measure Visibility When AI Answers Reduce Traditional Search Clicks

Your website might rank on Google’s first page, attract thousands of search impressions, and still receive fewer visitors than expected. People can now get answers directly from AI-powered search features without opening the websites that provided the information.

For businesses investing in SEO, this creates a difficult question. How do you know whether your online visibility is improving when traditional search clicks no longer explain the complete customer journey?

As you prepare your SEO strategy for 2027, measuring success will require a broader understanding of how people discover your business. The approaches below can help you see what’s working and where you need to improve.

Understand Why High Search Rankings May Generate Fewer Clicks

Ranking at the top of Google has traditionally been a strong indicator of SEO success. But when search results include an AI-generated answer, customers may find the information they need before reaching your website. This affects how businesses should interpret rankings and traffic.

According to Ahrefs, the presence of an AI Overview was associated with a 58% lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking result. 

That’s a real problem for websites that depend on organic search traffic, and online stores often notice it first.

“For online retailers, the searches that used to bring in curious shoppers are now the ones AI answers handle right on the results page. Questions about how a helmet should fit or what a safety rating means get answered before anyone clicks. The searches that still turn into visits come from people who are ready to compare products and buy. A drop in clicks doesn’t always mean a drop in sales, so check both before you panic,” says Bill Harbison, Owner of The Helmet Shop.

Start comparing search impressions, clicks, and click-through rates for your important pages. If rankings remain stable while clicks decline, examine whether AI Overviews or other search features appear for the relevant keywords. Compare similar periods and account for seasonal demand. That way, you can find the real cause of a traffic drop before you edit pages that still perform well in search.

Separate Traditional Search Performance From AI Visibility

Google Search Console has long helped businesses understand which queries generate impressions, clicks, and website visits. However, combining every type of search exposure into a single report makes it harder to see how AI-powered features contribute to visibility.

In June 2026, Google introduced dedicated generative AI performance reports in Search Console, with worldwide availability announced by the end of August. These reports provide information about pages appearing in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and supported Discover experiences. They show impressions across pages, countries, devices, and dates, giving website owners a clearer view of where their content appears.

According to Trevor Stewart, CEO & Founder at Let’s Get Optimized, “The biggest mistake I see is treating AI impressions as a replacement for clicks. They measure different things. A page can show up in AI Overviews hundreds of times a week and still send almost no visitors, while a plain service page quietly brings in the leads. Split the two in your reporting from day one, or you’ll end up rewriting pages that were never the problem.”

Use these reports alongside your existing organic search data. Identify pages receiving AI impressions and compare them with pages attracting traditional search traffic. A detailed buying guide might appear frequently in AI-generated answers while a service page generates most of your customer inquiries. 

Track How Often Your Business Appears in AI-Generated Answers

A customer asks an AI assistant to recommend accounting software for a growing business. The response mentions several providers, explains their features, and links to supporting information. Even if nobody clicks through to your website, being part of that answer puts your brand in front of a potential customer.

Tracking these appearances requires different measurements from traditional keyword rankings. Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster Tools introduced AI Performance reporting in 2026, allowing website owners to examine citations across supported Microsoft AI experiences. Its reporting includes cited pages, related queries, and citation trends. Additional features, including Citation Share, provide more detail about how frequently content appears among cited sources.

Oscar Fullmer, Co-Founder of Fast Hippo Media, believes AI citations usually go to brands that are visible across many sources. “AI tools pull from whatever sources they trust on a topic, which means forums, videos, reviews, and industry articles all count,” he explains. “Brands that take a Content Everywhere approach give these systems more chances to find and cite them. If your expertise only lives on your own blog, you’re easy to leave out of the answer.”

Use available reporting tools to identify which pages receive citations and which subjects generate visibility. Check whether your business is accurately represented in relevant AI answers. 

Pay attention to the difference between a brand mention and a link to your website, since these aren’t always the same. Citation counts help you observe visibility, but they don’t establish a fixed ranking or prove that customers purchased because of an AI recommendation.

Pay Closer Attention to Branded Search Demand

A potential customer reads an AI-generated comparison that mentions your company but doesn’t follow the link immediately. Several days later, they remember your name and search for it directly on Google. Your analytics records a branded search visit, even though the initial discovery happened elsewhere.

These journeys create attribution challenges. Customers encounter businesses through AI answers, industry articles, social media, and traditional search results. When they return using your brand name, the final visit reveals little about which earlier interaction encouraged their interest.

Video and social content often play the same quiet role. “A lot of discovery now happens on platforms that never show up in a search report. Someone watches a short brand video, forgets about it, and searches for the company name a week later. That search gets the credit, but the video did the introducing. If branded searches climb after a campaign goes live, that pattern is worth noting even when no single report connects the two,” observes Julian Tillotson, CEO & Founder of Indirap.

Monitor branded and non-branded search queries separately in Google Search Console. Look at changes in brand-related impressions and clicks alongside marketing campaigns, media coverage, and available AI visibility reports. Pay attention to searches mentioning your products or services with your company name. 

Connect SEO Performance With Qualified Leads and Sales

A website attracting fewer visitors isn’t necessarily performing worse for the business. A product page that brings customers ready to purchase could generate more valuable results than an informational article attracting readers who have no immediate buying plans.

Traditional SEO reporting often emphasizes traffic volume because visits are easy to measure. However, business owners need to know whether interested customers complete meaningful actions. For an ecommerce store, that could mean purchases and revenue. Service businesses might prioritize qualified inquiries, consultation bookings, and completed contracts.

This matters even more in B2B, where a single inquiry can be worth more than thousands of casual visits. Eran Mizrahi, CEO & Founder of Source86, said, “A procurement manager might read three articles, compare suppliers, and only then send a request for samples. If you judge SEO by traffic alone, you miss the fact that one qualified inquiry from the right buyer can turn into a supply relationship that lasts for years.”

Connect your analytics with sales or customer management records wherever possible. Review which landing pages attract customers who take valuable actions, and compare performance across relevant search channels. Track conversion rates, revenue, and lead quality alongside impressions and clicks. 

 

When traffic declines, investigate whether customer outcomes changed at the same time. This allows you to judge performance through actual business results instead of assuming every lost click represents a lost opportunity.

Monitor Referral Traffic From AI Search Platforms

Traditional organic traffic remains important, but AI search tools are creating another way for people to discover websites. Someone comparing software providers through ChatGPT might follow a recommended link to check pricing, explore product features, or request a demonstration. These visits give businesses another opportunity to reach customers who are already researching their options.

The growth is becoming noticeable. According to SE Ranking’s 2026 AI Traffic Research, website traffic from AI search engines increased 16 times between 2024 and 2026. AI referrals accounted for 0.02% of overall website traffic in 2024, rising to 0.24% in 2025 and 0.32% in 2026.

Although AI referrals still represent a relatively small share of total traffic, the increase shows why businesses should begin monitoring this channel.

Retail is one place where these referrals are starting to show up. Experts from Lashkaraa.com — anarkali specialists, note that shoppers coming from AI tools tend to arrive with a clear idea of what they want. “More customers start by asking an AI assistant what to wear to a wedding or a festival, so by the time they reach a store they already know the style, color, or fabric they’re after. Those visits are fewer, but they’re focused. Watching which product pages they land on tells you a lot about what AI tools are recommending.”

Use your website analytics to identify visitors arriving from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other AI search platforms. Examine which pages attract these visitors and whether they explore your services, request information, or complete purchases. Compare their conversion rates with traditional organic traffic to understand their value.

Build an SEO Dashboard That Shows the Entire Customer Journey

Monthly SEO reports become difficult to use when they contain dozens of charts without explaining what deserves attention. Rankings, impressions, AI citations, and conversions each provide useful information, but they need to answer practical questions about your marketing performance.

Create a dashboard that brings together traditional search visibility, generative AI impressions, identifiable AI referrals, branded searches, and customer conversions. Keep the measurements clearly labeled because they represent different activities. An impression shows exposure, a citation records a reference, a visit shows website traffic, and a conversion represents a completed customer action.

For manufacturers and other businesses with long sales cycles, the dashboard also needs to show what happens after the first visit. Daniel C, CMO of Preface Pallets, recommends linking search data to the sales pipeline instead of stopping at traffic. “In industrial sales, a buyer might find you through a search, request a quote weeks later, and place an order months after that. A dashboard that ends at clicks makes those deals invisible. Track quote requests and repeat orders next to your search data, and you’ll see which pages actually bring in business.”

Review changes monthly and investigate important differences before adjusting your strategy. If an article receives growing AI exposure but limited traffic, check whether customers can find a useful next step when they visit. 

If a service page generates strong leads despite fewer clicks, examine what makes those visitors valuable. Document the changes you make and compare results over suitable periods. Your reporting should help you decide where to improve content, resolve technical problems, and invest your SEO budget.

Influencer Content Can Strengthen a Brand’s Search Presence Beyond Clicks

AI-generated answers rely on information available across the web, making a brand’s wider digital footprint increasingly relevant to how it is discovered and understood. Influencer partnerships can contribute to that footprint through product demonstrations, detailed reviews, creator blogs, and discussions that explain how a product performs in real-world situations. Although not every social mention will be indexed or cited by an AI system, creator content can help establish recognizable product information and give prospective customers additional sources to evaluate.

“Influencer marketing becomes more valuable when brands assess its contribution across the entire customer journey, rather than stopping at engagement metrics. At Upfluence, we believe marketers should look at how creator partnerships contribute to brand discovery, product research, branded searches, and eventual purchases. As AI answers change how consumers find information, a creator’s detailed product explanation or authentic demonstration may help a potential customer recognize and evaluate a brand before visiting its website. Connecting creator performance with search and conversion data gives businesses a more complete view of that influence,” says Kevin Creusy, Co-CEO at Upfluence.

Brand Visibility in AI Search Matters Even When Users Never Click

As AI-powered search experiences become more prominent, brands must rethink how they measure discovery. A user researching gaming marketplaces, digital items, or gaming-related products may receive an AI-generated answer that summarizes available options before visiting any website. Even when that answer satisfies the user’s immediate question, the brands mentioned in it can influence which businesses the user remembers and considers later. This makes brand inclusion, accurate descriptions, and consistent information across the web increasingly important parts of search visibility.

“Gaming audiences often research a marketplace before deciding where to trade, so being discoverable is only part of the equation. At Tradeit, I believe brands need to understand how players encounter them across search results, community discussions, and AI-generated recommendations. If an AI answer introduces a user to a marketplace but that user never clicks immediately, the exposure may still influence a later branded search or direct visit. Marketing teams should connect these visibility signals with engagement and conversions to understand whether discovery is translating into trust and action,” says Noam Friedman, CMO of Tradeit.

Measure AI Search Exposure Across Different Keyword Types

A top Google ranking doesn’t always bring the traffic your business expects. When an AI Overview appears, customers might find answers directly on the search results page without visiting individual websites. This makes it important to understand which keywords are losing clicks and how AI-generated answers affect their performance.

Research from SeoProfy found that click-through rates for top-ranking informational keywords declined by 44.6% between March 2024 and March 2025. 

For keywords that triggered AI Overviews, click-through rates dropped by 64.4% during the same period. These findings show why businesses need to examine search performance beyond keyword positions.

Ákos Doleschall, Managing Director at Hustler Marketing, points out that not every informational keyword loses traffic at the same rate. “A simple definition gets answered in the AI Overview, and that’s the end of it. Comparison searches like mailchimp vs klaviyo are different, because people want the details, the pricing, and an honest verdict before they commit to a tool. Sort your keywords by intent, and you’ll usually find that comparison pages are still worth fighting for.”

Start by identifying your most valuable keywords and checking which ones trigger AI Overviews. Compare their impressions, clicks, and search positions in Google Search Console to understand where traffic is declining. 

Healthcare SEO Must Measure Trust and Patient Understanding, Not Just Traffic

Healthcare search presents a particular challenge because patients often seek clear explanations before deciding whether to consult a professional. Someone experiencing knee pain, for example, may ask an AI-powered search tool about common symptoms, possible causes, or when medical assessment is appropriate. If the answer provides enough information to address an initial concern, that person may never click through to a clinic’s website. Traditional analytics could therefore record no visit even when the clinic’s broader online presence contributes to how patients understand their options.

Dr Adrian Lau of Hip & Knee Orthopaedics says, “Patients frequently search for explanations of hip and knee pain before deciding whether to seek medical attention. An AI-generated answer may help someone understand common symptoms, but it cannot replace an examination or provide a reliable diagnosis for every individual. In my view, healthcare providers should measure their online presence not only by website visits but also by whether their information is accurate, understandable, and helps patients recognize when professional assessment is appropriate. Visibility is meaningful when it connects people with dependable medical guidance, rather than simply increasing the number of times a clinic appears in search results.

Real Estate Businesses Need to Track High-Intent Discovery Beyond Organic Clicks

Real estate searches often involve extensive research before a prospective buyer contacts an agent or property business. A person exploring home prices, selling options, local market conditions, or the process of selling a property may receive a useful summary directly from an AI search experience. That answer could shape the person’s understanding of the market and influence which companies they investigate later. As a result, a decline in organic clicks does not necessarily mean that a real estate brand has lost all influence over the decision-making process.

“Buying a home or deciding to sell a property is rarely an impulsive decision. People research their options, compare local conditions, and build confidence before contacting a real estate business. I believe companies need to measure whether their online visibility is helping them become a trusted option during that process, even when an AI answer satisfies an early research question without generating a click. For a property business, valuation requests, qualified enquiries, and direct conversations can reveal more about commercial impact than traffic numbers alone. The key is connecting discovery data with the actions that indicate a genuine intention to buy or sell,” says Dan Close, Founder and CEO of BuyingHomes.

Digital PR and Expert Citations Can Help Brands Build Visibility Across Search and AI

As search experiences evolve, businesses need to think beyond optimizing pages for a list of target keywords. Their expertise, reputation, and presence across credible third-party publications can also help potential customers evaluate whether a brand is trustworthy. Digital PR provides one way to build that wider presence by connecting qualified experts with journalists seeking informed commentary. When a company’s representative contributes useful insights to a relevant editorial article, the resulting coverage can introduce the brand to new audiences while creating a verifiable reference to its expertise.

However, earned media should not be treated as a guaranteed route into AI-generated answers. Citation patterns vary between systems and queries, and a published mention does not automatically produce a backlink, a ranking improvement, or an AI citation. Businesses should track the outcomes they can verify, including the quality and relevance of editorial links, referral visits, branded search growth, referral conversions, and documented appearances in AI answers. Combining these indicators helps marketers assess whether digital PR is building a stronger online reputation and contributing to discoverability beyond conventional search results.

“From my experience in journalist outreach, the most valuable placements are earned by providing journalists with relevant expertise, original insights, and answers that genuinely improve their stories. At HARO Link Building, I believe digital PR should be evaluated on more than the number of backlinks delivered. A relevant editorial mention can strengthen a brand’s credibility with readers and create another credible reference to its expertise, while a quality do-follow link can also support its broader SEO strategy. As AI answers reduce the need for some traditional search clicks, businesses should track editorial coverage, referral traffic, branded search demand, and verified AI citations separately. No placement guarantees AI visibility, but a consistent record of relevant, authoritative coverage gives brands more opportunities to be discovered and evaluated,” says Rameez Ghayas Usmani, Award-Winning HARO Link Builder and CEO of HARO Link Building.

Final Words

SEO success in 2027 will require businesses to measure how customers discover their brands across traditional and AI-powered search experiences. Rankings and organic clicks will remain important, but they cannot explain every interaction that influences a purchasing decision.

Companies should begin by improving their existing search reporting and adding reliable AI visibility measurements where available. Tracking branded searches, referral traffic, qualified leads, and revenue will provide a more useful understanding of marketing performance.

The priority should be making decisions based on what your data actually shows. When you understand which pages attract attention and which interactions bring valuable customers, you can improve your SEO strategy without chasing rankings or traffic figures that contribute little to business growth.

From Still Reference to Motion: A Creative Workflow for AI-Assisted Visual Studies

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From Still Reference to Motion: A Creative Workflow for AI-Assisted Visual Studies

A strong visual idea often begins with a single image. It might be a photograph, a film still, a character sketch, or a carefully composed digital illustration. Turning that image into a moving sequence, however, introduces new creative decisions involving timing, camera movement, atmosphere, and visual continuity.

For artists and filmmakers, AI-assisted motion studies offer a way to explore these decisions before developing a finished production. The objective is not simply to animate a picture, but to understand how movement can strengthen its original mood and meaning. A structured workflow helps creative practitioners experiment with different directions while maintaining control over the artistic outcome. By combining a clear reference, purposeful instructions, and careful evaluation, creators can use AI-assisted processes to investigate visual possibilities without surrendering their creative judgment.

Establish the Visual Direction

Before introducing movement, examine the reference image closely. Identify its defining characteristics, including composition, lighting, color, perspective, and emotional tone. These elements form the visual foundation of the sequence and help determine which changes will support the original concept.

Next, decide what should move and what should remain stable. A portrait might benefit from a subtle change in expression, while an architectural scene could be explored through a slow camera movement. Establishing these priorities prevents unnecessary motion from distracting viewers from the subject.

A useful starting point is a short description of the intended action, camera behavior, and atmosphere. Keeping the initial direction focused makes it easier to assess whether the resulting sequence reflects the original artistic intention.

Develop the Still Image into Motion

Motion introduces relationships that do not exist in a single frame. A camera movement changes perspective, a moving subject alters the composition, and environmental motion can influence the mood of an entire scene.

Artists should therefore approach each study as an experiment rather than a finished deliverable. An AI creative workspace for image and video work, such as YouArt, can serve as a starting point for exploring visual concepts across still and moving formats.

The important consideration is whether the movement serves a clear purpose. A slow camera push might create intimacy, while drifting mist could introduce atmosphere to a landscape. These choices should emerge from the creative brief rather than from a desire to make every element move.

Review, Refine, and Compare

Once a sequence is generated, review it alongside the original reference. Look for changes in composition, inconsistent details, distracting movement, and pacing that conflicts with the intended mood. Technical smoothness alone does not guarantee a successful visual result.

Make feedback specific and actionable. If the subject becomes less prominent, reconsider the camera direction. If movement feels exaggerated, simplify the intended action. Comparing different interpretations can also reveal which approach communicates the concept most effectively.

This review process is particularly valuable during early filmmaking and visual development, when ideas are still flexible. A short study can help clarify artistic decisions before additional production work begins.

Keep Creative Judgment at the Center

AI-assisted experimentation is most useful when artists remain responsible for the final decisions. Generated results may introduce unexpected details or interpretations, but these should be evaluated against the project’s visual goals rather than accepted automatically.

Maintaining a clear reference, recording revision decisions, and assessing each variation against the creative brief can help preserve consistency throughout the process. The artist’s role remains essential in determining what feels authentic, what supports the narrative, and what should be discarded.

Conclusion

Transforming a still reference into a moving sequence requires a balance between experimentation and direction. A clear visual concept establishes the foundation, intentional movement develops the idea, and structured review helps determine whether the result communicates the intended meaning.

AI-assisted workflows can support this process, but their value depends on how thoughtfully artists use them. The ability to compare possibilities is only useful when creators can recognize the difference between movement that adds meaning and movement that creates distraction.

For creative practitioners, the long-term opportunity lies in combining new production methods with established artistic principles. The goal is not merely to animate an image, but to develop a coherent visual idea in which every movement has a reason to exist.

Dazy Drops New Single ‘Unreasonable Person’

Konstantinos Pappis
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Dazy Drops New Single ‘Unreasonable Person’

Dazy has released ‘Unreasonable Person’, an exuberant new single from the forthcoming compilation MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD Vol. 2: 24 Songs From 2023-2026. It follows previous singles ‘Ugly’ and ‘Beat Change’. Check it out below.

Mahershala Ali Net Worth, Salary & Highest Grossing Movies

Alexandra Pleșa
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Mahershala Ali Net Worth, Salary & Highest Grossing Movies

With two Academy Awards and several other accolades under his belt, Mahershala Ali needs little introduction. While he started his career in television, he eventually embraced film and is now a highly sought-after actor, seamlessly moving between blockbusters and more character-driven work.

As a result, his net worth should be substantial by now, right? Here’s what we know about the actor’s earnings.

Mahershala Ali Net Worth

In 2026, Mahershala Ali’s net worth is estimated to be $12 million.

Most of it is thanks to his entertainment career. Ali started working in television in the early 2000s with a role in the medical drama Crossing Jordan. He also appeared in Threat Matrix before gaining wider recognition with sci-fi series The 4400. Early film work included The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Crossing Over, Predators, and The Place Beyond the Pines. All enabled him to establish a reputation for bringing complexity to supporting roles.

His major television breakthrough came in 2013, when he began playing Remy Danton in Netflix’s political thriller House of Cards. In 2014 and 2015, he appeared as Commander Boggs in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and Part 2, which introduced him to a much larger international audience.

That said, it was 2016 that proved to be a defining year for Ali. He appeared in Kicks, Free State of Jones, and Hidden Figures. More importantly, he played a Miami drug dealer in highly acclaimed movie Moonlight, a role that brought him his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He won his second for Green Book, which came out in 2018.

From there on, Ali diversified his filmography even further. You might have seen him in blockbusters Alita: Battle Angel and Jurassic World Rebirth. He also voices Aaron Davis / Prowler in the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse film series and starred in Netflix apocalyptic thriller Leave the World Behind. On the television side, Ali played the lead in the third season of HBO’s True Detective.

Besides acting, Ali also dabbled in music and producing.

Mahershala Ali Salary

Actor salaries are rarely made public. Even so, reports suggest that Ali was paid $1.3 million/episode to star in upcoming limited series The Plot, so it’s safe to assume that his paychecks are on the hefty side.

It’s also estimated that Ali commanded around $2-3 million for Jurassic World Rebirth. However, his fee is sure to vary by project.

Mahershala Ali Highest Grossing Movies

Ali’s highest-grossing movie is Jurassic World Rebirth, which made $872.4 million worldwide. The Hunger Games movies were also box office hits.

This year, fans can catch Ali in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, an action thriller currently in cinemas. He’s also part of the voice cast for stop-motion animated fantasy film Wildwood. Next year, he’ll reprise his voice role in sequel Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse.

Online Casinos Australia: How to Read Games, Bonuses and Payments Before Playing

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Online Casinos Australia: How to Read Games, Bonuses and Payments Before Playing

Online casinos Australia all look easy before money enters the room. The lobby shows pokies, jackpots, free spins, maybe a live roulette table blinking in the corner. Then one small rule changes the whole session: a $100 bonus turns into $3,500 in wagering, the best-looking pokie contributes 0%, or a $10 spin breaks a $5 max-bet term. That is where good casino reading starts. Not with the biggest banner, but with the rules that decide what happens after a win.

The first deposit is only the warm-up

A deposit button is easy to design. A useful cashier is harder. Australia casino online pokies pages often push the fun part first, then leave payment rules tucked behind tabs. That is where the reading should start.

Area What matters
Pokies RTP notes, jackpot type, bet range and demo mode
Bonus Wagering, max bet, expiry date and eligible games
Cashier Deposit methods, withdrawal route and pending status
Account Login tools, messages and review requests
Support Payment help, bonus help and response channels

Example: a player deposits $50 with a 100% match. Balance shows $100, nice enough. If the bonus has 35x wagering on bonus funds, that means $1,750 in required bets before withdrawal terms loosen. If the max bet is $5, a single $10 spin with bonus money may put winnings outside promo rules. 

Pokies need more than a nice thumbnail

Online pokies Australia players usually look at theme first. Fair. A good game tile does half the seducing. Still, the better questions are drier: what is the RTP, what is the bet range, is the jackpot fixed or progressive, and does the title count toward bonus wagering?

A progressive jackpot pokie, for example, may have a smaller base-game rhythm because the top prize pool sits elsewhere. A high-volatility pokie may go quiet for long stretches, then hit hard. A low-volatility title tends to pay smaller amounts more often. Same reels, very different mood.

Useful pokie checks include:

  • RTP figure where the game page shows it;
  • Minimum and maximum bet size;
  • Jackpot type, fixed or progressive;
  • Bonus feature rules, such as free spins or pick rounds;
  • Promotion contribution for active bonus play.

This is the part that separates casual browsing from informed play. Nobody needs to study a pokie like a court case. A two-minute check still helps.

What About Cashier

A strong cashier page names payment methods clearly. Cards, e-wallets, bank transfer and crypto all behave differently. Take crypto. If the casino shows a USDT TRC20 address, the player must send USDT on TRC20. Sending USDT on ERC20 is the wrong route! 

Cards have their own routine. If a player deposits with Visa, the casino may send withdrawals back to the same card only. E-wallets can sit in “pending” while the account team checks the request. Bank transfer usually asks for details: account name, BSB, account number, sometimes a matching account holder name.

A useful account page shows the things players check after a win:

  • Cash balance and bonus balance as separate amounts;
  • Last deposit method, with date and amount;
  • Active wagering progress, for example $640 left from a $1,750 requirement;
  • Pending withdrawal status, including request time;
  • Account messages about ID, payment review or bonus rules.

Picture the usual scenario. A player wins on pokies, opens the cashier and sees two balances: $220 cash and $80 bonus. Good. Then the withdrawal page shows the last deposit was made by e-wallet, with $400 pending since 10:42 pm. 

Australia casino online pokies are where the session gets fun. The cashier is where it either stays tidy or turns into a headache after a win.

FAQ

What are online casinos Australia?

Online casinos Australia are casino-style sites discussed by Australian players for pokies, bonuses, live games and cashier access. Online casinos Australia should be judged by payment clarity, bonus terms, account tools and game information.

What are Australia casino online pokies?

Australia casino online pokies are digital reel games on casino-style platforms aimed at Australian players. Australia casino online pokies may include classic reels, jackpot titles, free spin features and demo modes.

How should players compare online pokies Australia?

Online pokies Australia should be compared by RTP notes, volatility, bet range, jackpot type and bonus eligibility. Online pokies Australia pages are easier to judge when cashier rules and promotion terms are visible.

Take Charge of My Heart Season 2: Cast, Rumours & Release Date

Alexandra Pleșa
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Take Charge of My Heart Season 2: Cast, Rumours & Release Date

There’s someone out there for everyone. At least, that’s what the latest Korean romance doing numbers on Netflix seems to suggest. When a woman who electrically shocks the people she touches and a man with an artificial heart meet, sparks fly.

With 3 million views last week, Take Charge of My Heart is currently among the most-watched non-English titles on Netflix. It’s also a Top 10 show in 44 countries. Does that mean a follow-up is on the way? Here’s what we know so far.

Take Charge of My Heart Season 2 Release Date

At the time of writing, there’s no official news available on a potential Take Charge of My Heart season 2.

The fantasy romance is listed as a limited series on Netflix, and Korean productions rarely get sequels. In other words, it looks like the episodes currently available are all there is.

Take Charge of My Heart Cast

  • Kim Young-kwang as Baek Ho-rang
  • Chae Soo-bin as Na Bo-bae
  • Cha Woo-min as Ji Eun-ho
  • Jung Jae-kwang as Choi Do-yoon
  • Shin Do-hyun as Han Seol-hee
  • Kim Mi-kyung as Kong Man-seol
  • Heo Dong-won as Yoon Jae-ho
  • Kim Ah-young as Cheo Seo-jeong

What Is Take Charge of My Heart About?

Take Charge of My Heart centres on Na Bo-bae, an aspiring screenwriter. She’s literally not like other girls because she has a mysterious electrical ability. Whenever she touches someone, she gives them a painful shock. As a result, Bo-bae has never experienced a normal romantic relationship, making it difficult for her to write a convincing love story.

Her life takes an unexpected turn when she meets Baek Ho-rang. Turns out, his artificial heart is running out of power, and Bo-bae’s electricity can recharge it. The two strike an unusual deal. She will help keep him alive while he helps her experience the romantic milestones she needs for her writing.

As you probably figured out, their practical arrangement gradually develops into a genuine romance. However, a succession battle and further complications threaten the relationship. Thankfully, by the time the finale wraps up, you’re not left with any questions about the couple’s future.

That sense of closure is another sign that Take Charge of My Heart season 2 is unlikely. Still, if you’re in the mood for an electric romance, the 10 episodes streaming don’t disappoint.

Are There Other Shows Like Take Charge of My Heart?

Enjoyed Take Charge of My Heart? Check out some of the other romance series on Netflix. Like The Scandal, Crew Girl, The Early Spring, My Brilliant Career, Our Sticky Love, Spooky in Love, or My Life with the Walter Boys.

Kalyani Tupkary talks FLORA x tiat Olfactory Thing Incubator at TIAT Gallery

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Kalyani Tupkary talks FLORA x tiat Olfactory Thing Incubator at TIAT Gallery

As artificial intelligence tools are transforming how digital products are built, product designers are stepping into speculative environments to explore how emerging technologies interact with human perception. 

Kalyani Tupkary, a senior product designer and foresight strategist whose work bridges functional user interfaces, interactive systems, and speculative design, would know.

Tupkary, who has spearheaded design initiatives at companies like Twitch and Roblox, was recently selected as one of five creatives for a four-week juried residency co-hosted by generative AI platform Flora.ai and The Intersection of Art & Technology (TIAT), a San Francisco gallery dedicated to creative technology. 

The residency culminated in The Olfactory Thing, an exhibition where residents were challenged to use Flora’s creative AI software to visualize olfactory experiences and translate scent into tangible interactive formats.

Tupkary’s practice combines traditional product design with foresight methodologies.Rather than focusing strictly on visual generative output, Tupkary utilized the residency to design an entire conceptual institution: the “Public Library of Smell.”The installation reimagined how society classifies, cataloged, and interacts with olfactory memories by applying the familiar organizational structures of a traditional public library, to scent.

“I created the Public Library of Smell, a fictional institution that attempts to classify, catalogue, and arrange smells,” Tupkary said. “Using the familiar structure of a library, the project explores how our most elusive sense might be categorized, or perhaps mis-categorized, if treated with the same systems we apply to sound, image and text.”

The installation featured an array of physical and digital touchpoints, including library card drawers categorized under an 18-part Olfactory Classification System, a service kiosk, informational brochures and intake forms for visitors to borrow, lend, or donate their own scents. The graphic design of the project was created by Sneha Sankar.

The 18-scent list included familiar scents like “Grandmother” and “Fir Forest,” as well as unusual categories like “Ant Pheromone,” designed for non-humans. Tupkary, dressed in a white linen collared shirt resembling a librarian’s outfit, guided guests through each scent and its background.

Tupkary personally staffed the installation desk as the head librarian, guiding visitors through scent requests processed like authentic library transactions.

“It made me wonder: what if, instead of an archive, there was a public institution around smell?” Tupkary explained. She drew inspiration from field research at the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents in Berkeley, California.

“Unlike an archive, which suggests preservation of fixed materials, a library is dynamic, shaped by its visitors, continuously updated, and always incomplete,” she adds. “I identified quintessential library artifacts and experiences—brochures, forms, library cards, drawers, and a librarian’s desk—and reimagined each of them around the sense of smell.”

By treating the fictional library as a fully realized product, Tupkary applied core user-experience principles; system design, interaction flows, physical touchpoints, and informational hierarchy, to make the speculative concept feel practical and accessible to gallery visitors.

“This is where my product design practice comes in,” she added. “I designed the objects, interactions, and systems that made it feel functional, and therefore real. They grounded the speculative idea and made it tangible.”

Tupkary’s work at the TIAT Gallery highlights a broader career trajectory defined by translating emerging technology into concrete digital and physical experiences. Her professional portfolio features high-impact commercial design projects alongside open-source framework contributions.

At Twitch, Tupkary conceived and led Twitch from the Future, a foresight initiative that translated complex qualitative and quantitative research into speculative product features and interactive prototypes. 

To demonstrate how potential product concepts could operate in real-world scenarios, her team installed an immersive pop-up experience inside Twitch headquarters, allowing executives and engineering teams to test hypothetical features firsthand. The methodology proved influential, directly shaping annual product roadmap strategies before Tupkary co-presented the framework on stage at Figma’s Config conference in 2023.

Her broader portfolio also includes Calendar Collective, a living archive exploring alternative human perceptions of time featured in MIT Press’s Not Here, Not Now, as well as experimental physical-digital interactions such as the Braided Lamp, a lighting object activated through the tactile act of braiding.

Industry advisors for the TIAT residency, a panel including Julian Bleecker of Near Future Laboratory, Kenneth Kuh of Cursor, Leia Chang of the Exploratorium, and Scott Snibbe, worked directly with Tupkary and the other residents for weekly critiques to refine their concepts. 

Tupkary noted that feedback from advisors helped deepen the philosophical framework behind her installation, particularly regarding how human systems organize perceptual data.

“It helped me push the project further,” Tupkary said. “One conversation that particularly influenced me was with Julian Bleecker, who shared the Heavenly Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. It unlocked a new way of thinking about perception that shaped my project.”

As artificial intelligence platforms continue to automate routine design and software engineering tasks, technology companies are placing greater emphasis on designers who can evaluate how emerging tools impact human behavior, culture, and long-term user expectations.

Tupkary believes that putting generative software like Flora.ai into open-ended, experimental environments allows creative technologists to uncover edge cases, unconventional applications, and novel interaction patterns that standard product development cycles often overlook.

“The tools are changing at a speed that is hard to grasp, so we don’t always know how they will fit into workflows, what their full potential is, or how people might use them in unexpected ways,” Tupkary said. “That’s why it can be valuable for technology companies to put emerging tools in the hands of creatives and let them experiment.”

In an industry environment where short-term execution often overshadows long-term strategy, Tupkary argues that product design must maintain a strong prospective focus to help organizations navigate technological shifts responsibly.

“Through that process, creatives can uncover possible applications, behaviors, and experiences that may not be immediately apparent,” she noted. “Foresight provides a way to explore those possibilities and translate emerging technologies into tangible experiences that help companies understand where their tools could go next.”

The Weeknd is officially music’s reigning king of the bedroom playlist

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The Weeknd is officially music’s reigning king of the bedroom playlist

If your Spotify ‘sex playlist’ has a suspiciously heavy rotation of one artist, you’re not alone — new data confirms The Weeknd is the most streamed-for-seduction act in the game, and it’s not particularly close.

A fresh study analysing 12,356 public Spotify playlists tagged around sex and intimacy — spanning more than 2.8 million individual tracks — has crowned The Weeknd the most popular “bedroom artist,” with his 2014 Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack cut “Earned It” landing as the single most common song across all the playlists studied.

The research was conducted by adult services platform AdultWork, which combed through playlists carrying titles like “sex playlist,” “lovemaking,” and “intimate playlist” to see which artists and songs listeners actually reach for when the lights go down.

The Weeknd’s bedroom domination

The numbers aren’t subtle. The Weeknd racked up 3,195 total playlist appearances across 20 different songs — making him the only artist in the study to clear the 3,000 mark, and putting him nearly three times ahead of his closest competitor. “Earned It” alone appears on 541 playlists, a track that’s since amassed over 2.2 billion streams on Spotify and peaked at number six in the UK charts — proof that a song written for a movie soundtrack can take on a life entirely its own in listeners’ personal playlists.

He doesn’t stop at one hit, either. “Often” lands at third overall with 481 playlist appearances, “The Hills” sits at seventh with 383, and “Call Out My Name” rounds out his top-10 presence in eighth place with 379 appearances — meaning four of the ten most popular “bedroom songs” in the entire study belong to a single artist.

Who’s chasing him

Second place goes to Two Feet (Bill Dess), whose moody, guitar-inflected R&B has clearly found its niche: six of his songs appear across 1,174 playlists, making him the only other artist to break the 1,000-appearance threshold. His breakout track “Love Is A Bitch” is the second most popular song overall with 488 playlist appearances, while “I Feel Like I’m Drowning” also cracks the top 10 songs list in ninth.

USHER takes third overall, with 13 different songs spread across 703 playlists — a testament to the sheer depth of his back catalogue rather than one dominant single. His signature slow jam “Nice & Slow” is his top performer, appearing on 280 playlists. Jeremih (688 appearances, led by “Birthday Sex” on 290 playlists) and Chris Brown (685 appearances, with “Under The Influence” at 417) round out the top five.

Top 10 bedroom artists (based on no. of playlist appearances)

  1. The Weeknd – 3,195
  2. Two Feet – 1,174
  3. USHER – 703
  4. Jeremih – 688
  5. Chris Brown – 685
  6. Bryson Tiller – 670
  7. Rihanna – 660
  8. Chase Atlantic – 621
  9. Doja Cat – 608
  10. Ginuwine – 582 

The 2010s: music’s sexiest decade

Looking at the release years behind the top 200 songs, one decade stands head and shoulders above the rest: the 2010s account for 105 of the top 200 tracks — a full 52.5% — dwarfing the 1990s (18.5%) and 2000s (17.5%). The 1980s, by contrast, barely register, contributing just 1.5% of the list — so if you’re building a playlist inspired by yacht-rock era slow jams, the data suggests you’re in the minority.

Genre-wise, R&B is the undisputed sound of intimacy, claiming 106 of the top 200 songs, with pop (49) and alternative (31) trailing well behind.

Why this matters

Commenting on the findings, an AdultWork spokesperson noted that the research highlights just how central music is to people’s private lives, saying listeners’ tastes range from “chilled-out R&B” to “upbeat pop” and “cool and grungey alternative,” and that the sheer variety across the top 200 songs is “always worth celebrating.”

For readers building their own playlist, the data offers a pretty clear starting point: lead with The Weeknd, layer in some Two Feet and USHER, and lean R&B if you want to stay on-trend with what the rest of the country is apparently listening to.

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