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.