In 2014, Spotify released a case study touting the role of its own curated playlists in transforming house producer Robin Schulz’s bouncy remix of Dutch singer Mr. Probz’s “Waves” into a towering international hit. This Spotify-driven success—along with German producer Felix Jaehn’s blockbuster remix of Jamaican singer OMI’s “Cheerleader” and the popularity of Norwegian producer Kygo’s sleepy beats across the following year—spawned the mini-genre of tropical house. Commercially minded songwriters and producers took notice.

When trop-house met mainstream pop, on Skrillex, Diplo, and Justin Bieber’s early-2015 single “Where Are Ü Now,” the streaming era got its first signature style. Laid-back, melodic, lovelorn: This was EDM without being EDM. Nowhere was that more evident than in the song’s structure, which did away with conventional bridge, instead serving up a section that songwriter Harding calls a “pop-drop”—essentially EDM’s signature bass bombs normalized for everyday use. Bieber’s use of the pop-drop was honed on 2015’s “What Do You Mean” and “Sorry,” and the technique has since been adopted by Rihanna, Coldplay, Lady Gaga, and Maroon 5, as well as a host of newer acts like Kiiara and Charlie Puth.

The pop-drop has had few bigger practitioners and beneficiaries than Andrew Taggart and Alex Pall, aka the Chainsmokers. In June 2015, the duo released “Roses,” a single named after its co-songwriter and guest vocalist, Elizabeth Mencel, who records as Rozes. At that point, Taggart and Pall were on the verge of being a one-hit wonder, a year removed from their garishly viral novelty single “#Selfie.” But “Roses” was the first of five similar-sounding Top 10 hits they would score on the Billboard Hot 100, along with “Don’t Let Me Down,” featuring Daya, and “Closer,” a duet with Halsey. In July, the Chainsmokers ended 61 consecutive weeks in the Top 10, beating Ace of Base’s 23-year-old record for the longest streak by a duo or group. “We’re at an apex of a certain sound,” Harding says. That sound—fewer beats per minute, three or four repeating chords, a backdrop of rave-tent synths—is the sound of “Roses.”

In a sense, “Roses” is pretty traditional. It’s a love song with diaristic lyrics that are simple enough to translate as universal; Mencel wrote lines like “waste the night with an old film” about her real-life boyfriend, a movie buff. But not at all traditional is the fact that it has only one verse, never recurring, which lasts almost the entire first 30 seconds. “Taking it slow, but it’s not typical,” Mencel sings at the song’s start, as if predicting the path the Chainsmokers and other producers would take out of EDM.

Mencel describes streaming data as a guide for artists as they start putting out music. “Spotify tells you what your job is,” she explains, adding that her tracks are especially popular on the Teen Party playlist, a fizzy top hits collection with almost 3 million followers. This raises a slightly radical notion: Artists are now essentially creating with specific playlists in mind, potentially blurring traditional radio formats in the process.

Mencel has also been working on some unreleased music with One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson, a singer trying to establish a unique identity apart from his hugely popular group. “When you’re working with that type of artist it’s very important that you dig into something personal, because that’s what those fans want to connect to,” she says. “They want to feel like they’re being told a secret.”

Giving a sense that you’re confiding something intimate is another go-to move in recent pop songwriting and production. “People are listening smaller,” says songwriter Ross Golan, who interviews Top 40 songwriters like Stargate and Bonnie McKee on his “And the Writer Is...” podcast and has credits on hits including Selena Gomez’s “Same Old Love” and Ariana Grande’s “Dangerous Woman.” To Golan, this leads to production that feels like the singer is closer in your ear—music for headphones rather than car stereos, let alone arenas—and lyrics that sound more like they’re directed at the individual listener than at a crowd. “It takes a lot of confidence to sing quietly,” he says. “If you look at the Top 50 songs on Spotify, most of them have these almost mumbly-type performances. Even Kendrick and Drake—the rappers now are not these aggressive rappers. What’s popular is intimacy.”

Another element tying the streaming era’s music together is the way we listen to it: The phones and laptop speakers we often use can have a direct impact on the music that sounds best through them. Hit-making songwriter and producer Ricky Reed says he has worked carefully on his new and upcoming songs with positive hip-hop phenom Lizzo, electro-cumbia giants Bomba Estéreo, and gritty rapper Dej Loaf to create an impression of “phantom bass,” even on speakers with little bass output. And he points out that the abrasive SoundCloud rap coming out of Florida this year fares particularly well on non-audiophile setups.

Tamara Conniff, executive vice president at Roc Nation, says that while Top 40 is still traditional in what it will play, Spotify allows artists to garner millions of plays with something more adventurous. “That’s opened up creativity a lot more,” she maintains. Perfection, in these instances, may be less important.