Spotify- New About Section

I'm quite liking the refreshed 'About' section on Spotifys artist pages. Whereas before you had pictures and a biog text sourced from AMG, we can now see the top 5 playlists your artist was discovered in, rolling monthly plays and top 5 biggest cities.

It's been mentioned that Spotify are now into the numbers game.  If youtube and soundcloud are the rivals then it's plays not subscriptions to a artist that count first. It's no longer enough to say band X have 5000 followers, it looks a lot better to say 50,000 monthly plays and it gives a more accurate idea on how many people are really listening.

That said it still doesn't quite give an accurate picture of how many of those listens are just 'mood' or one track in a big playlist or just casual. Spotify are working on a system to see what proportion of those numbers are actual potential fans who haven't yet followed, rather than one off listens, but it's good to see.

The playlists 'discovered on' section is neat. Showing the Top 5 only -presumably as its public facing and they're not data geeks like us-, it gives an opportunity for smaller playlist channels to get profile as say a champion of brand new artist and release. Stay ahead of the game and on top of the newest releases and you might find your playlist in here.

You can see the number of unique 'discovered' plays too, so if you're in the top 5 you can see a little slice of how many listeners heard an artist for the very first time. Showing what playlist really adds for an artist fanbase and crucially, whilst we wait for Spotify to open up with more data on playlists, how many of your followers actually listen to what you add..

A very cool, useful, update from Spotify HQ.
 

Vanessa White of The Saturdays, 30,000 plays, compared to 143 followers after 2 singles

Top Cities now show who is listening in the 'Where People Listen' section. In this case New York is ahead because it's likely New Yorkers listen to..

..the Fresh Finds playlist which has added 5.6k listens in 10 days and shows in the 'Discovered On' section within About. My playlist is 3rd showing the benefit of adding a song to your playlist early in it's cycle.

Editorial Bias and Filtr, Digster & Topsify

This is a big subject and in some ways this article will pose more questions than answers but it's one I'm asked regularly

"do you pitch songs to Filtr, Digster, Topsify?"

The answer is of course yes. But there's a caveat. Filtr is Sony, Digster (now called HITS) is Universal and Topsify is what was playlists.net and owned by Warner Music Group.

A quick peruse of the playlists on these channels show that the number of tracks that aren't the label groups own repertoire are minimal.. take for instance Filtr's new music playlist which is 90% Sony  with about 10% from UMG and other artists where Sony are the label in the US, e.g Adele's Hello being included which is released and marketed by Columbia in the USA but XL in the UK.

So although a user might see 'Future Dance Anthems' playlist, what they're actually being fed is a small percentage of the music that could actually be the top dance hits because for instance Topsify will likely have a policy to not add UMG/Indie/Sony songs or others to their lists, focussing 90+% on their owned repertoire.

A decent and increasing wedge of marketing money is being set aside and spent on playlist marketing and users of Spotify , Apple and Deezer on these playlists will be getting a list picked from a limited range.

This is why, unlike Apple, it's good that both Deezer and Spotify are focussed on making User playlists available to find on search. Yes user playlists will be biased but without the pressure of a corporate decision to only include tracks from a small pool of choice.

Do users care or even know that often channels that don't explicitly say who is curating them, and deliberately exclude songs to the detriment of that list?

Many of the main channels have built up their followings with big marketing pushes funded by hefty budgets, but the cost is sometimes authenticity.

Why make a blog about playlists?

Hi! Thanks for visiting this page to journey in looking at trends within playlists and playlisting as a form.

I've started this blog as a way to connect further and ask questions about an area of music I am passionate about, interested in and involved with daily. Playlists!

Key questions I hope to pose and answer will be as much to do with the artistic form of how tracks are chosen and the editorial side as it will effective marketing techniques , good practice and asking questions on new developments.

To give you my background I grew up listening to the radio and the music in my parents car and loved it. My dad played classical music interspersed  with the Police, Camel, The Orb and Supertramp. My mum is a true child of the 60's so the Beatles era through to Enya and Kate Bush. One of my favourite radio shows was Paul Conroy on Galaxy 101 on Sunday afternoons. His blend of funk and soul massively influenced me and got me into the genre.

From this interest I learnt to DJ and mix , did stints at hospital radio and my local bbc station as well as co founding a station at UWE in Bristol called The Hub. This led to work at hmv and then into the music industry proper where I help to sell records to key accounts like Amazon.

The first place I was really able to make a playlist was burning a cd of tracks from a computer to an audio disc from iTunes. It was so easy compared to tape and mini disk. I used to make compilations of funk soul and disco, often for the purposes of having 'go to' CDs for the car or DJing.

Of course having to pay for a download and then burn the cd was a long process but I felt I owned it a bit more. I still pay for downloads alongside LPs  CDs and streaming now so in terms of my favoured platform I like elements of all of them.

Anyway enough of me.. onwards to the juicy part..