
Surprises from Analyzing Spotify Streaming Data - chadmhorner
https://readypipe.com/blog/9-surprises-from-analyzing-spotify-streams-data/
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caractacus
The data is hugely skewed because they're only looking at the top 200 each
day. There are 50m tracks on streaming services and the popularity of the long
tail is growing.

The 500 most streamed tracks in the US received just 10.7% of total audio
streams in 2018, down from 14.6% in 2017. There were 36.3m different tracks
streamed across the year, up from 33.2m in 2017.

[https://cdn.mbw.44bytes.net/files/2019/01/BuzzAngle-
Music-20...](https://cdn.mbw.44bytes.net/files/2019/01/BuzzAngle-
Music-2018-US-Report-Industry.pdf)

~~~
3xblah
Cassette and vinyl sales are both up from 2017.

What strikes me about a report like this is that the report is comfortable
comparing sales to "consumption".

Are these really the same?

Third parties do not necessarily know how many times someone cues up a track
on their turntable or tape deck. (Unless today's turntables and tape decks are
being engineered to "phone home".) Instead they measure sales of physical
media containing copies.

On the other hand, with respect to so-called "streaming" the report says about
85% of this type of consumption is from subscriptions. But curiously the
report does not measure subscription sales/renewals.

Maybe I missed something.

~~~
saaaaaam
Cassette and vinyl sales are both up - but still represent a tiny fraction of
music sales - vinyl Is about 3% or 4% of sales in the UK.

As regards comparing consumption to sales: this is a fairly standard
“equivalent” used in the music industry.

I’m unclear on what else you are saying. You say “so-called ‘streaming’” but
why is it “so-called”? It’s pretty clear that the market has shifted to access
over ownership or “so-called ‘streaming’”. Subscription streaming services are
growing rapidly year-on-year. The stats are easy to find - perhaps the author
didn’t feel it was necessary to quote numbers that are fairly widely discussed
in mainstream and specialist media.

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saaaaaam
No surprises. I kept scrolling to find the “surprise”.

I would have been much more interested if you’d said “we can scrape Spotify:
here is what we found when X”

As it happens I’ve “requested access” but nearly hit the back button because I
was looking for the surprise and didn’t see it.

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svantana
Nice work, though I didn't find any actual surprises in the list.

Also, looking at the data source (spotifycharts.com), they offer csv downloads
of all the charts, which makes it a weird choice to showcase this apparent
html scraper library/service?

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elektor
This is pretty cool. The one factoid that stood out to me was everyone
flocking to listen to SAD! by XXXTENTACION the day after he was assassinated.

I'm surprised this wasn't the case with Mac Miller's death, although maybe it
did it just didn't top the charts.

~~~
chadmhorner
Indeed, Mac did certainly see an increase in streams after his death. It just
wasn't of the same magnitude: [https://infogram.com/xxx-mac-miller-
comparision-1hxr4zlxzp85...](https://infogram.com/xxx-mac-miller-
comparision-1hxr4zlxzp856yo?live)

(and again, note that this is only counts streams for songs that were in the
Global Top 200 for a given day)

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sherlock_h
Interesting to see that almost all of non-US top hits are seemingly Latin
American.

~~~
jameane
On a somewhat related topic - the How I Built This episode with the Zumba
founders is fascinating. [https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-
radio/how-i...](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-radio/how-i-
built-this/e/zumba-beto-perez-alberto-perlman-48691075)

 __spoiler alert __One of their biggest revenue streams is with artists and
music labels launching their songs in Zumba classes via the "official"
playlists. Zumba is an excellent promotion channel for Latin music/island
music and other "tropical" music.

The non-english language music is huge and works completely different than the
rest of the pop charts.

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unparagoned
I've been wondering for years what people listen to. Spotify and YouTube have
kept me in a bubble and I have no clue what people are listening to. I'm
hoping there's a few gems in these lists.

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fallingfrog
I’m getting old. Never heard of a single one of these artists.

~~~
randie63
don't worry, you did not miss much. most of the new chart music is pure
cancer. and I'm 22

