Spotify Users Have Spent Over 2.3 Billion Hours Streaming Discover Weekly Playlists Since 2015
Discover Weekly, your weekly mixtape of fresh music, is celebrating an anniversary—five years of discovery this July. But the beloved playlist has humble origins, initially starting as an idea at Spotify’s annual Hack Week. Since then, it’s become known as one of our flagship offerings, was parodied on April Fools (2019’s Disco Cover Weekly, anyone?), and has introduced our Spotify users to some of their new favorite artists.
In the five years since its launch, listeners have also streamed endless hours of the Discover Weekly playlist—over 2.3 billion hours between July 2015 and June 25, 2020 For the numerically inclined, that’s more than:
- 8.4 trillion seconds
- 140 billion minutes
- 2.3 billion hours
- 97.3 million days
- 13.9 million weeks
- 266.5 thousand years
For context: That’s longer than human civilization has been around!
Since the playlist updates every Monday with new music based on your personal listening habits, it leads users to find new artists, tracks, and hits to fall in love with. The Moroccan-Dutch DJ R3HAB is the most “discovered” artist in the most markets—16, to be exact—meaning users across those countries streamed him the most out of any other creator on their Discover Weekly playlist.
“I love how Spotify allows my music to connect with people across so many cultures,” R3HAB told For the Record. “I’ve always considered myself a world artist and it’s amazing to see my music truly traveling. Spotify has broken down the geographical boundaries of music discovery, allowing people from all over to discover my music as soon as it’s released. Thank you, Discover Weekly.”
Halsey takes the spot for most discovered female artist globally. Notably, she released her first album, Badlands, in 2015—the same year Discover Weekly was created! Now, she’s included on the list of Top Streamed Female Artists on Spotify.
U.S. listeners stream Discover Weekly the most, and have spent a lot of time “discovering” music from RAC and Khalid. In the U.K. listeners have found Detroit-born house producer MK, and German DJ Alle Farben racks up the streams in his home country. And they’re discovering artists across genres too—everything from EDM to grupera (a regional Mexican style), to indietronica and Lithuanian folk.
With so much discovery in such a short span of time, (you know, compared to the entirety of human civilization), we can’t wait to see what the next five years will bring for this star playlist.
