Spotify - anyone heard of it?

In general, there doesn't tend to be a very satisfying way to answer questions of the form "Why doesn't (company) (do this thing you want)...?". Usually it's just that there are lots of things to do, and the others are more urgent or seem to offer better return or require less work or entail less complexity. Personally, I love stats.

I figure w apple music and tidal and co. trying to capture market share, each service would try to differentiate itself as much as possible - providing listening stats would be an easy one that people would be into. spotify is the best so far in that it ties into last.fm, but the integration can be tricky and when I signed into last.fm via spotify on multiple devices,spotify lost its mind and I had to go back and forth w customer support for ages.

thanks glenn. have the 'your top songs of 2016' pl; was hoping for more of the data visualisation stuff spotify has done in past years. are the songs in the pl in order of plays?

The songs are in ranked order, yes. It's not literally by play-count, because we weight different kinds of plays slightly differently, but it's close.

As for other things, watch your email...

Glenn, does offline plays count? I swear I've played Vybz Kartel «Fever» more than anything this year but it's nowhere to be found in my top 100.

Offline plays count, yes. Unless they're local files that for some reason we couldn't match to our catalog.

That's... extremely weird.

What's you Spotify username? I may or may not be able to figure anything out about this, but I don't mind looking...

I just followed you on spotify. Let me know if you can't see me.

I do realize that I've probably played my favorite songs in Serato more than I've played them in Spotify, but for that song not to have made the top 100 while the Kendrick Lamar album I listened to while reviewing it in... January? February? but never since is up in the top ten seems exceedingly strange.

Seems like further down the list are some examples of "the track after the track I really like" that got played halfway by accident and maybe not all always the way through.

Er, it's reasonable to think that that would work, but no, I can't tell which one is you. You can email me. glennm at spotify.

For most purposes, though, we only consider it a "skip" if you play less than :30 of a song.

Ah, thanks.

If a track's less than 30 seconds long does it get recorded as a play?

Most recommendation-related stuff just ignores <30s tracks completely...

android app has been so buggy for me as of late. never had a problem before.

lol that "Your Top Song 2016" list for me is nuts. I'm not sure if there's a single song I actually listened to on there. Maybe someone who's a big fan of RHCP and Linkin Park has been using my account.

send me your Spotify username (email to glennm at spotify) and I'll take a look...

(I mean, this isn't a list of songs we THINK you'd like, it's a list of songs your account has actually played. Any chance you use multiple accounts, or switched accounts during the year?)

I do like "Airport Bar" by Martin Courtney but I'm 100% certain it isnt in my Top 3 of most listened tracks this year. Not even Top 10

Did your phone make a pants call to Spotify whilst that song was on repeat?

Maybe. Its either that or I feel asleep drunk while it played on repeat

The song-ordering isn't simply by play-count, we try to weight different kinds of plays differently. But mostly it ends up about the same.

can you elaborate on what those "different kinds" are? just curious.

Mainly we try to give more weight to songs you actively choose over ones that get programmed for you in radio and things like that.

There are a ton of songs on this "Wrapped" list I only played once, and lots of songs I listened to more than once which aren't here. But yeah, I listen to a lot of albums and other people's playlists on Spotify, and the one-plays on the Wrapped list are things I remember hearing on purpose: i.e. searching for artist name, scrolling to the song, playing that particular song.

are songs that are a part of someone else's playlist weighted less? the only way i listen to spotify outside of podcasts is by adding songs to my own library or downloading other peoples' playlists, and i generally listen offline. the one song that i've played as much as any (lucy by destra) is all the way down at #26, but i did listen to it a lot off of the ilx 2015 tracks playlist. also i tend to listen to it like 12 times in a row (lol), probably pressing the back button before the song is finished, maybe those don't count?

it does look like it really values songs that you add to your library. there's a bunch of songs from albums i listened to once over songs i listened to a million times off of playlists

i have no idea how baby hold on by eddie money is #10 when i listened to it once, realized i hated it and then only listened to the first few seconds accidentally forevermore. are you shaming me for adding baby hold on by eddie money to my personal library, glenn? i was already ashamed, i only kept it there to keep myself humble

I have yet to get this but an ad really wants me to play the chainsmokers

oh hey a new version of my 2016 list popped up this morning with stuff I've listened to on it. cool

Oh, if you got your 2016 list way early, you may have been part of an early test-group, and may actually have gotten a test version that really did have songs you had barely played. So yeah, worth checking yours again if it seemed crazy at first.

On the subject of the Chainsmokers, I happened to collect up this playlist of "Closer" covers yesterday: https://open.spotify.com/user/glennpmcdonald/playlist/5vW8k7Y9rqEzM473kpmcGg

I wasn't much into the original, but I'm finding the marathon series of covers kind of mesmerizing.

Spotify still doing that thing where it will randomly jump back to the first track of an album. So annoying. Surely someone must be fixing this.

Under investigation according to the latest updates. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Spotify-restarts-albums-somewhat-randomly/idi-p/1505230#comments

maybe an algorithm figured out that people pretty just like the first three tracks of most albums

the way the "your daily mix" feature separates by style is weird - "here's your daily mix for Monday, it's strictly guitar bros, here's Tuesday, it's rap" - you'd think if the algorithm noticed your tastes are all over the place, it'd mix it up

Separating them by listening mode is the point of Daily Mix. But there's a mix per mode, not per day. Each one is daily. You can listen to them all every day.

I usd to get 6 great mxes, now dropped to 4 and the one i listened to most has vanished :(

so many "and such small portions" moments itt

Separating them by listening mode is the point of Daily Mix. But there's a mix per mode, not per day. Each one is daily. You can listen to them all every day.

word, it's just odd to me that they all operate on the assumption that genre variety is bad/undesirable within a continuous mix. not actually a complaint, I like these, but it's ~~~interesting~~~

I could imagine that it's not easy to auto-generate a coherent mix spanning various genres.

Don't mind the stratification, although I guess now that I am down to three- my Brazilian mix, my jazz mix, my indie/classic rock mix- I miss my hip hop mix. Don't miss my wtf mix though

Is there a way to regenerate that hip hop playlist, starfish style?

I promise in advance not to post on any hip hop threads if and when that happens

Kate Bush's HOUNDS OF LOVE is on Spotify now

Weird, has been on there for ages in australa

Tralalatralalala

Thought you were responding to the latest posts on the sf thread

Ah, my fourth mix came back- there was a Fourth Mix!- repurposed as a Latin Mix.

I had already noticed hounds of love! That's the only song in the world that I'd really, really missed before.