Tag: Altar

How Who We Be, Altar, and Our Generation Are Propelling UK and Irish Artists to the Top

February 8, 2021

Spotify’s editorial playlists are full of musical collections that fans won’t find anywhere else. Some of these playlists follow moods, while others contain songs curated for a specific genre—many of these playlists highlight emerging artists and help them connect their music with new audiences.

In the UK and Ireland, three flagship playlists are particularly influential. Listeners can find the UK’s biggest rap, grime, R&B, Afrobeat, and dancehall hits on Who We Be. Altar is the destination for the best electronic dance music. And for those looking to experience new and emerging genreless sounds, the Our Generation playlist contains some of the most exciting emerging acts on the UK and Irish scenes.

In 2020, many fans discovered new artists through these lists, and the proof is in the numbers. Read on to learn about some of the standout artists who saw success on these playlists last year. 

Who We Be

The Who We Be playlist has grown significantly since its launch in 2016, and it now has over half a million fiercely loyal and engaged followers. One of the playlist’s biggest breakthroughs in 2020 was Central Cee. The West London rapper commanded more than 200,000 streams from the Who We Be playlist alone, and he saw almost instant success with his single “Day In The Life.” Since he joined the Who We Be Community, the artist’s followers on Spotify have grown by almost 359%.

S1mba is another rapper who made waves last year with his debut single, “Rover (feat. DTG),” which peaked at number two in the UK Top 40 in April. The Zimbabwean-born Londoner is the 15th-most-streamed artist overall on the playlist, and since “Rover” was released, he has seen a 16,435% rise in listens.

After being featured on Who We Be, Tiana Blake’s “Cut Ties” became the best-performing traditional R&B track from a British artist on the playlist. The track went on to make waves in other global Spotify playlists, such as Chilled R&B, and saw a 159% rise in streams.

Altar

Dance and Electronic music isn’t going anywhere. If you need proof, look no further than the Altar playlist, which saw a 193% increase in listens in 2020. One of the biggest artist breakthroughs of 2020 was award-winning producer Fred Gibson, who released tracks under his alias, Fred again... The artist’s unique sound blends raw vocal samples with club-ready euphoria and has been a hit with the Altar audience; they’ve made him one of the top 20 most-streamed artists on the playlist last year.

TSHA was the third-most-streamed UK female on the playlist in 2020. She saw an increase in year-on-year streams of 134%. TSHA’s single “Change” with Gabrielle Aplin, which was recorded at a Spotify Song Writing Camp in 2019, became one of the top-100-streamed tracks from Altar in 2020. 

In May, one of Europe’s most exciting DJs and producers, India Jordan, launched their genre-defining EP For You. Two of the tracks, “For You” and “I’m Waiting,” were featured on the Altar playlist, and over the course of the year, their streams increased by 388%. India was also one of Spotify’s RADAR first listen artists in 2020.

Our Generation

Genreless playlists are growing in popularity around the world, and the case is no different for Our Generation. The playlist, which surfaces the new wave of artists emerging across the UK and Irish musical landscape, saw an 18% increase in streams in 2020. With playlist takeovers from some of the most exciting breakthrough artists on the scene, including beabadoobee, Thomas Headon, and Biig Piig, the home of genre-defying artists has driven huge discovery for fans this year.

Our Generation played an influential role in elevating many artists, including rising star Holly Humberstone, who has grown her audience to over 2 million monthly listeners since her first release, “Deep End,” was added to the playlist in early 2020. 

Other acts that saw great first-time success include Tayo Sound, who was busking on the streets of Reading less than a year before making it onto the cover of the Our Generation playlist in May 2020. His hits “Cold Feet” and “Heartbreaker” were two of the most-streamed tracks on the playlist in 2020, and overall his streams soared by more than 1,000% in the last six months. 

Kamal, an 18-year-old London alternative R&B star, secured the second-most-streamed track on Our Generation with “homebody” after he was featured on his first Spotify playlist cover art in early 2020. Since then, the artist has seen an 84% growth in listens.

With a new year comes more new music. Follow these playlists to discover the latest finds when it comes to emerging artists and hit tracks.

Spotify lança creme, a playlist com o melhor do som de música urbana do Brasil

January 27, 2021

Desde o lançamento da Pollen em 2018, as playlists sem gênero do Spotify decolaram em todo o mundo. Com a Pollen, surgiu a Oyster nos países nórdicos, a Altar no Reino Unido e a Mixto, sucesso entre os amantes da música latina nos EUA. Todas elas são playlists sem um gênero musical específico, servindo como uma espécie de coleção de sons que desafiam os limites, agrupados e inspirados nas comunidades de ouvintes.

No Brasil, nossos editores queriam criar um tipo de espaço semelhante — no qual a música possa ser cultivada em uma pluralidade sem gênero com uma vibração sonora específica, mesclando ritmos de diferentes tipos de música. Para isso, eles buscaram a diversidade cultural e de longo alcance da música urbana nacional, que já desafiava a categorização e as convenções musicais no país.

E é aí que nasce a creme. 

“Para mim, a creme é uma playlist que traduz a diversidade de sons que o brasileiro entrega na música, com uma variedade de beats, letras e flow”, diz o cantor Donatto, que considera sua música uma mistura de pop com essência de MPB. “A creme é uma playlist para reunir amigos e curtir uma boa onda”, afirma.

Xamã, o rapper que, nos últimos três meses, foi um dos artistas mais escutados da creme, considera seu trabalho “parte da nova MPB”. O cantor explica: “A nova MPB é a música de rua, música que toca nos bares, nos prédios, que toca no morro! Uma mistura de rap e funk, música urbana e música de rua”, completa.

A creme, originalmente conhecida como “Beat Urbano”, foi rebatizada como “O creme da mistura urbana brasileira”. Em termos de gênero, o hip-hop e o pop constituem a maioria das faixas e artistas representados, mas um olhar mais atento revela as categorizações mais específicas em uma gama de sons – hip-hop brasileiro, funk carioca, funk ostentação, R&B brasileiro e trap.

Isso se encaixa no sentimento geral da música urbana no Brasil, que não está ligada a um gênero específico, mas abrange funk, trap, R&B, hip-hop e até Afrobeats. A creme representa melhor uma “união” de muitos estilos musicais para evocar um sentimento em torno de uma cultura compartilhada, ao invés de um gênero.

Da mesma forma que outras playlists sem gênero criadas em todo o mundo, os ouvintes da creme tendem a ser da Geração Z. Enquanto isso, a maioria dos ouvintes das outras principais playlists brasileiras tem mais de 25 anos. E assim como playlists como a Pollen intercalam artistas consagrados com os recém-chegados, a creme apresentou aos ouvintes brasileiros muitos sons novos. Andressinha e Nyna foram os artistas mais descobertos na playlist entre outubro de 2020 e janeiro de 2021, aproveitando o espaço compartilhado com os artistas mais escutados da playlist no mesmo período, Xamã, MC Cabelinho, Pedro Lotto, Pk e Ludmilla. 

“Ao ouvir a playlist creme, você se insere nesse novo estilo musical”, diz Xamã. “Todo mundo ouve. É um som que permite que todos sejam representados, inclusive eu”, afirma.

A creme também reflete novas expressões da cultura urbana do Brasil como é o caso da faixa de funk consciente com temática sócio-política, “Deus é por nós” de MC Marks, que atingiu o Top 50 do Spotify Charts no Brasil. Na mesma época, grupos de artistas brasileiros se reuniram para gravar e lançar o “Poesia Acústica”, uma série de vídeos e singles que mesclam artistas de diversos gêneros como rap, R&B e funk, com uma vibe acústica descontraída. A “Poesia Acústica #9: Melhor Forma” tornou-se um hit top 15 nas paradas brasileiras do Spotify por mais de 60 dias consecutivos, após o lançamento.

Já nos últimos 90 dias, outro “Poesia”, a “Poesia Acústica 10: Recomeçar” de BK, Black, Delacruz, JayA Luuck, Ludmilla, MC Cabelinho, Orochi, Pineapple StormTv, Pk, e Salve Malak, conquistaram seu lugar como a segunda música mais ouvida da playlist. A primeira foi a música “LARISSA” de Luan e Pedro Sampaio e em terceiro ficou “Oclin e Evoque” de Djonga, MC Rick, Sidoka e Tropa do Bruxo. No futuro, as músicas mais escutadas podem vir de qualquer artista, com qualquer som.

“É uma honra fazer parte da playlist creme, sempre escuto”, diz Donatto. “Eu sei que é uma playlist que tem muitos artistas referências e fazer parte dessa playlist é uma honra e um sonho bem grande. Estar no meio de grandes artistas que essa playlist traz, acredito que pode abrir novas portas para mim e mostrar meu trabalho para pessoas que ainda não conhecem”, completa o cantor.

Curta o som da música urbana brasileira escutando a creme logo abaixo.

Caribou’s Dan Snaith on New Music, Discovery, and Spotify’s Altar Playlist

December 11, 2019

Many electronic producers double as DJs, and most DJs also produce, but Dan Snaith is more versatile than most. Since 2001, the music he makes as Caribou has set a high standard for melodic, propulsive, sonically adventurous indie dance. Then there’s Caribou the live act, which expands Snaith’s studio material for a full band—not just interpreting the songs, but radically transforming them. Finally, Snaith moonlights as Daphni, turning out sleek funk and disco edits for his famously wide-ranging DJ sets.

The sweep of Snaith’s output, spanning home-listening faves and underground club heaters alike, makes him a fitting figure to spotlight as Spotify relaunches its Altar playlist. Dedicated to alternative electronic music and club culture —spanning house, bass, techno, downtempo, and just about every conceivable permutation thereof—Altar reflects the kinds of sounds that Snaith spent nearly 20 years pioneering.

This February, Snaith will release Suddenly, the first new Caribou album in more than five years. The first single, “Home,” dropped in October, and the second single, “You and I,” earlier this month. When For the Record reached Dan Snaith at his studio in London, he was working on preparations for the band’s upcoming tour. “It’s all starting to become real,” he said. “It’s been so long that I’m just so excited to get it going again.”

We spoke with Snaith about his creative process, his upcoming album, and the state of electronic music right now.

“Home,” the first single from the forthcoming Caribou album, almost sounds like it could be a Daphni song. How do those two projects inform each other?

There are definitely some Caribou tracks that almost could have been Daphni tracks, like “Bowls” on Swim or “Mars” on Our Love. It’s kind of magnetic: Sometimes there’s an attraction; sometimes it’s the opposite. After the Daphni album in 2017 was when I really started making this new Caribou record in earnest. It was like, okay, now I can have more all-encompassing tracks that explore harmony or lyrics, whereas Daphni is specifically about making music that’s club-focused. “Home” kind of sits apart from a lot of the other stuff on the record, actually. There are things that are reminiscent of Daphni, but I think there’s a lot that’s quite far away from that world as well. 

With Caribou, are you gathering pieces of songs before you actually sit down to make the album in earnest, or are you starting from scratch?

I’m gathering pieces all the time. I’ll have a verse for a year and then eventually I come up with a chorus, or some switch gets flipped and another piece of the song comes together. There are some loops on the new record that existed even before Our Love was finished. I sit down in the studio every day and I make four or five 30-second-long loops, little ideas. So if you think about how long I’ve been making this record, now I’ve got a playlist with 900 ideas in it. Then it’s this editing process, funneling things down over a long period of time, to get minutes of music out of hours and hours and hours of stuff. Which sounds torturous, and sometimes it is, but that’s the thing that I most enjoy, starting from nothing and making some kind of idea. 

Let’s talk about the state of electronic music. What sounds are you particularly excited about right now?

When I started in the early 2000s, the idea of somebody in experimental electronic music working on a Timbaland or a Neptunes record seemed totally absurd. Currently, there’s a much closer connection between experimental electronic music and the mainstream. It’s kind of hard to draw a boundary anymore. Now everything is electronic music, in a technical sense. Everybody’s recording on the same tools, whether you’re making a Taylor Swift record or a Skee Mask record.

That said, there have been times when I felt like I understood where the momentum in the electronic music world was. In 2008, 2009, living in London, meeting people like Floating Points, Joy Orbison, the Hessle Audio guys, it was like, wow, there’s something really exciting and focused happening. It was easy to feed off that energy. Now, it doesn’t feel like there’s a central narrative, but what’s exciting about what’s happening is that there are many more diverse voices in electronic music than there used to be 10 or 15 years ago. 

It’s been a while since any significant new genres have emerged. Do you sense anything new on the horizon?

When I was in high school, I heard jungle for the first time, and I couldn’t even wrap my head around it. I haven’t had that shock-of-the-new feeling for a long time. I hear individual producers with new ideas, but not something so completely new as a genre that it allows for a whole world to jump out of it. Presumably that will happen again. 

It sometimes seems like there’s so much electronic music out there now that there isn’t the chance for consensus to build.

I feel like people are waiting for it. Everybody is talking about what a big tune that Overmono track “Le Tigre” is. Now that the Caribou album is done, I’m excited to get out there and be playing, but I’m also sneakily going to start thinking about making club music again, because I’ll be out there doing shows, maybe I’ll play at the occasional after-party. It’s moments like that that get me geared up like, “Okay, I gotta make something that, like, bangs in a club.”

You’ve been around since the days of actual physical crate-digging in record stores, and a lot of the music you make as Daphni is rooted in sampling rarities. How has streaming changed the way you discover music?

I think I’ve learned about more new and exciting music digitally than I did when I was mostly digging through dusty piles of records, although I think there’s still room for both things. As a music fan, how can it not be wonderful that the entire history of recorded music is available to everybody at all times? As somebody who grew up in small-town Canada finding it difficult to get my hands on records, I’ve met young people over the past decade or so that have a remarkably eclectic and encyclopedic knowledge of music and music history. If they want to learn it, it’s all available to them. 

You know, I’ve got this 1,000-plus-song playlist called “The Longest Mixtape.” Apart from my own music, the one thing that I have to share with people is that I’ve spent my whole life digging, finding obscure and popular music that for me has something special about it, some magic. And I thought, if I could put all those things in one place for people to listen to, this is something that’s possible now and was never possible before.

Are you a fan of Altar? 

Yeah! With a playlist like Altar, you go there knowing it represents a certain type of music that you’re interested in and discover things you don’t know. I also like the fact that it’s occasionally curated by other people. You look at it and see, oh, Peggy Gou or somebody has picked a bunch of stuff that she’s into at the moment. That idea of having guest curators seems like a really interesting way of sharing people’s personal tastes within a palette where you know roughly what to expect.

Is there anything that you want to say about your album?

I’m just so excited for people to hear this album in full. People have heard the first two singles, but I feel like it’s a real album album. There’s so much diverse stuff sitting there together that I hope coheres in a kind of narrative throughout. It’s something I’ve lived with for so long. Actually, the other day, a friend of mine came over, and I’ve listened to it a zillion times, obviously, but he was like, “Can I just listen to it the whole way through?” I was like, Okay, here goes, I gotta listen to this one more time. And it was the first time that I heard it as a listener. You know, you get so wrapped up in the details, like, the minutiae of mixing and mastering. I hadn’t listened to it for a month or so. And I sat down and listened to it with him, and it was reassuring. I thought, this is something that I can be proud of.

Check out Caribou’s latest single, “You and I,” on Altar.