charts discussion The Secret Hit-Making Power of the Spotify Playlist

[alexanderao]

A brilliant new article from WIRED, with some awesome insights into how Spotify playlists work. I've pulled out some of the more eye-catching quotations.

 

READ THE FULL PIECE HERE

 

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Just as Facebook loves rolling out new features to a tiny subset of its users, killing what doesn’t work and expanding on what does, Spotify considers every track a beta test. Nick Holmsten, the service’s head of shows and editorial, claims he could dig into the data and tell you which new song will be a hit in six months.

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“Spotify playlists, and Spotify charts, and Spotify plays, have become the number one tool that labels and artists and managers are using in order to break artists and measure success,” says industry analyst Mark Mulligan. Facebook has more users, YouTube has more views, but Spotify represents more important real estate. “If you get things working on Spotify,” Mulligan says, “that’s going to crank the wheel.”

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Listeners now spend about half their time on Spotify listening to playlists, either of their own creation or curated by Spotify’s editors and other tastemakers.

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There’s an official pitch process, a form anyone can fill out with details about their track and their hopes and dreams for world-beating success, but a little inside knowledge helps.

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Spotify and other streaming services are all about data. People pull the levers that make it all work, sure, but you can’t fake listener data. If a song works, it grows. If it doesn’t, it dies.

 

Holmsten says this process makes Spotify transparent with creators and impervious to their cajoling. Editors exert some control over how a song enters the Spotify Playlist Machine, but Holmsten swears musicians can’t beg, borrow, or bribe their way into Today’s Top Hits. “There’s absolutely no way to push our team,” he says. “It’s no one person’s feeling that matters.”

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Spotify often hears from artists who went from part-time musicians to earning a living from their art after their placement on a couple small but well targeted playlists got them in front of the right audience.

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“Playlists are Spotify’s answer to product innovation,” Mulligan says. The company sees its network of playlists as its key differentiator—the place you go to find something to listen to, the perfect track plucked out of tens of millions of options. It doesn’t matter whether that track comes from the biggest artist on the planet, or someone like Starley Hope, a 20-something from Australia nobody’s ever heard of. If you’ll like it, it’ll find you. Spotify makes sure of that.

 

[Samson]

I read this article on saturday, I loved it I was gonna make a thread but I got too lazy lol

[TSLGNMA]

It's not very secret tho... pretty transparent actually.

[alexanderao]

Just now, TSLGNMA said:

It's not very secret tho... pretty transparent actually.

Well, unknown to the casual music fan. I think that's what they were going for, because WIRED is a tech magazine, not specifically a music one. Their audience is comparatively lay.

[TSLGNMA]

2 minutes ago, alexanderao said:

Well, unknown to the casual music fan. I think that's what they were going for.

Yeah. I was thinking its transparent more along the lines of payola for big artists. The playlists are a great thing for up and coming artists who want/need exposure tho.

Edited May 10, 2017 by TSLGNMA

[Buddy]

Spotify has helped me find so much good music. Spotify's algorithms changed my life forever 

 

[J a y]

 

Worth noting here that about half of Spotify's users are free tier and use Playlists as they can only skip/shuffle, depending on device and accessibility. For everyone, especially those with an account, it's algorithmically generated music.

 

Clicking on "Taylor Swift", Following Taylor Swift, listening to Playlists attached to Taylor Swift's profile, the Related Artists to Taylor Swift, etc etc etc. After a few hundred listens of your other favourite artists and genres, you'll find Personalised Playlists, Mixes, Discoveries, recieve Notifications of Releases, and have more suggestions of similar music to what you've listened to very recently. 

 

All that data is sent and recieved and then the monkeys in the truck compile a list of 50 and title it Today's Top Hits. When Taylor Swift, a very popular artist releases music, the team know that the millions following that particular playlist will stream it and that generates money for the platform, the record label and the artist.

 

Very clever technology!

[alexanderao]

1 hour ago, J a y said:

 

Worth noting here that about half of Spotify's users are free tier and use Playlists as they can only skip/shuffle, depending on device and accessibility. For everyone, especially those with an account, it's algorithmically generated music.

 

Clicking on "Taylor Swift", Following Taylor Swift, listening to Playlists attached to Taylor Swift's profile, the Related Artists to Taylor Swift, etc etc etc. After a few hundred listens of your other favourite artists and genres, you'll find Personalised Playlists, Mixes, Discoveries, recieve Notifications of Releases, and have more suggestions of similar music to what you've listened to very recently. 

 

All that data is sent and recieved and then the monkeys in the truck compile a list of 50 and title it Today's Top Hits. When Taylor Swift, a very popular artist releases music, the team know that the millions following that particular playlist will stream it and that generates money for the platform, the record label and the artist.

 

Very clever technology!

The free tier % is closer to 3/4 than 1/2. And that's only on mobile devices–even there, though, easy workarounds exist (like creating a playlist made up of just one song if you want to hear a song on-demand).

[J a y]

11 minutes ago, alexanderao said:

The free tier % is closer to 3/4 than 1/2. And that's only on mobile devices–even there, though, easy workarounds exist (like creating a playlist made up of just one song if you want to hear a song on-demand).

Average Joe won't bother doing that. They'll be the kind of listeners who use YouTube. Should be the ones investing in a Family Plan and splitting the bill between friends. I feel like we're at a really great time in music but we won't all realise it til we look back and remember when streaming changed the industry for the better