Tag: discover weekly

Spotify Users Have Spent Over 2.3 Billion Hours Streaming Discover Weekly Playlists Since 2015

July 9, 2020

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.

Your Daily Podcasts Playlist Makes Finding Your Next Favorite Show Easier Than Ever

November 19, 2019

You’ve just binged your favorite podcast and you’re finally caught up. But now you have to wait an entire week until the next episode. Now what? With so many great podcasts on Spotify, it can be hard to know what to listen to next. Thanks to our latest personalized playlist, it’s now easier than ever. 

Spotify transformed music discovery with playlists like Discover Weekly and Daily Mix. Now we’ve created Your Daily Podcasts—our first daily personalized podcast playlist that gives users an easy way to discover new shows while also keeping up with old favorites. If you’ve listened to at least four podcasts in the past 90 days, you’ll find the playlist in the “Your Top Podcasts” shelf on Home or in the “Made For You” hub on browse.

Here’s how Your Daily Podcasts works:

  1. Spotify’s algorithms analyze your podcast behavior—like recent streams and follows.
  2. Then, based on your listening history and the podcast type, we’ll recommend the next best episodes for you.
  3. That might be the next sequential episode in a podcast you’re already listening to (think Dog Tales and How’s Work with Esther Perel), a recent stand-alone evergreen episode in another show (maybe Amy Schumer Presents: 3 Girls 1 Keith or Certified Buckets), or a timely episode from a daily updating podcast (like Horoscope Today or The Journal).  
  4. Don’t worry—no spoilers here! If you’ve never listened to a story-driven sequential show we think you’d like, you’ll get the trailer or pilot episode first—to see if it catches your eye (er, ear).

Free and Premium users in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Sweden, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand can check out their Your Daily Podcasts playlist, now available on Spotify.

Introducing Two New Personalized Playlists: On Repeat and Repeat Rewind

September 24, 2019

You play Discover Weekly when you’re looking for something new, Release Radar when you’re looking to stay ahead of the trends, and Your Summer Rewind when you need a bit of summer nostalgia. No matter what you’re looking for, one of our personalized Spotify playlists has you covered—and now, we’re releasing two more into the mix: On Repeat and Repeat Rewind. 

With these two new playlists, you can sit back, relax, and fall in love with the songs you’ve played most all over again. Check out what each has to offer.

On Repeat – The music you’ve been streaming nonstop

Get even more of your current favorite tracks with On Repeat. This playlist helps you keep track of what you’ve been playing most over the past 30 days. On Repeat auto-updates, so you can be sure everything on there is the most up-to-date account of what you’ve been playing nonstop. It’s a great combination of all the music you love, no matter what artist or genre, so each time you tap play, it will sound a little different. 

Repeat Rewind – The tunes you used to play a lot, re-delivered

On the other hand, Repeat Rewind is a great way to reminisce with the songs you fell in love with in the not-so-far-off past. It includes tracks that you played over a month ago for you to rediscover. Whether you’re constantly discovering something new or a purveyor of the classics, sometimes it feels good to just kick back with the familiar. Similarly to On Repeat, your songs can span across artists, moods, and genres, and update every five days. (But don’t worry, the tracks will never appear on both playlists at the same time).  

Can’t wait to see the songs you’ve been streaming nonstop? These two playlists are now available globally for Free and Premium users in the Made For You Hub, as well as the “Uniquely Yours” shelf on Home. See if yours stack up with the top 10 most-repeated songs globally.* 

  1. “Señorita” – Camila Cabello, Shawn Mendes
  2. “China” – Anuel AA, Daddy Yankee, J Balvin, KAROL G, Ozuna
  3. “Ransom” – Lil Tecca
  4. “Goodbyes (Feat. Young Thug)” – Post Malone, Young Thug
  5. “boyfriend (with Social House)” – Ariana Grande, Social House
  6. “Beautiful People (feat. Khalid)” – Ed Sheeran, Khalid
  7. “Dance Monkey” – Tones and I
  8. “How Do You Sleep?” – Sam Smith
  9. “Lalala” – Y2K, bbno$
  10. “Lover” – Taylor Swift

*Songs that have been played by users more than once per day, in the past 30 days

Five Ways to Make Your Discover Weekly Playlists Even More Personalized

May 2, 2019

Every Monday morning, Spotify listeners are greeted—some might say gifted—with a new Discover Weekly playlist to help set their soundtrack for the next seven days. The weekly dose of recommended songs started as a project from one of Spotify’s Hack Weeks, and quickly caught on. Now, every Monday, listeners get a new, curated playlist of 30 songs from a variety of artists to explore.

Ever logged in to find a seemingly perfect Discover Weekly? While it might seem like wizardry, Discover Weekly becomes more personalized the more you use and engage with it. Here are five ways to keep the curation “magic” going:

1. Heart This

Love a new track you just heard? Click the “heart” icon next to the song on mobile or desktop, and there will be more where that came from down the road.

2. Follow Along

Make sure to “follow” your favorite artists—the curation magic will pull in songs from similar artists that we have a hunch you’ll like. As for your “followed” artists, head over to your Release Radar playlist, which updates every Friday, to hear all their new music right after it drops.

3. You Really Really Like It

If you’re totally obsessed with a new-to-you track, add it to your own personally curated playlists. This lets us know the song is more than just a momentary obsession, and we’ll be sure to serve up songs in the same vein.

4. Don’t Overthink It

We all have that friend who shares a ton of tracks from their favorite new artist. But what if they’re not really your taste? Not to worry: Listening to a song once without replaying or “hearting” won’t affect your Discover Weekly selections.

5. Keep It Private

If you’re listening to music you may not want to show up in your Discover Weekly (for example, if your friend with questionable music taste is DJing a party from your phone), put your Spotify on Private Mode. If you’re streaming from desktop, simply click the down arrow shaped like a “V” in the top right corner of the app and select “Private Session.” For mobile and tablet, navigate to Settings, then Social, and turn on “Private Session.”

There you have it! All the information you need for future playlists. Now that you’re more in control of your Discover Weekly destiny, prepare for a whole new world of soon-to-be-favorite songs and artists at your fingertips every Monday.

Open your Discover Weekly and get listening!

Our Spotify Cheat Sheet: 4 Ways to Find Your Next Favorite Song

November 2, 2018

She dresses with an effortless cool, she knows the best hidden taco joints, and her music taste is always on point. She’s the friend who introduced to that new artist you’re streaming on repeat and brought you to the random concert that, in a nutshell, changed your life.

We’re here to tell you: You can be that cool friend. Whether you’re looking for your next favorite artist or for something a little outside your musical comfort zone, discovery awaits via scrolling and clicking. From personalized playlists to just-for-you radio, Spotify has your back.

Bookmark this immediately. Here are four ways to discover new music on Spotify.

1. Spotify Radio Playlists

If you like the ease of someone else choosing songs for you, you should try Spotify Radio

What it is: Choose a song, artist, or playlist, and we’ll play hours of similar music that matches what you like. For example, get going with Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash into Me” and breeze right into a mix of Tom Petty,Dispatch, and DMB deep cuts that you might have forgotten.

How to do it: Follow a playlist to save it to your radio library, and further personalize it by liking or disliking tracks. On desktop, head over to Radio and click CREATE NEW STATION. Enter a track, artist, or playlist and Spotify will create a station based on that music. Hit FOLLOW to save the station in Your Library, under Stations. Unfollowing the station will remove it.

On the app, hit Radio, then New Station on the top right. Search for a track, artist, or playlist, and choose the song you’d like to start with. On the Station page, tap FOLLOW to save it to Your Library under Stations.

2. Discover Weekly

If you like music that’s totally new to you but would work perfectly with your current playlists, you should try Discover Weekly

What it is: Based on your listening history and that of fans with similar taste, the Discover Weekly playlist is like getting recommendations from the more in-the-know version of yourself. It’s so famous among users for how well it just gets you that this feature has a fair share of groupies. (Seriously. Just ask around.) Because of how well it pinpoints your taste in music, it feels like your Discover Weekly knows you better than your significant other. Better than your sister after 15 years of sharing a room. You get the gist.

Discover Weekly is 30 new songs we think you’ll love, delivered every Monday. Remember that Discover Weekly refreshes every week, so make sure you save your favorites.

How to do it: On desktop or web player, you’ll find Discover Weekly in Your Library (Your Music on web player) under Playlists. On mobile, it’s in Home under Made for You for free users. For Premium subscribers, it’s in Your Library under Playlists, or in Browse under Discover.

The playlist is set to private by default, but you can set it to public, share it with friends, and follow other users’ Discover Weekly playlists. And those private sessions? They don’t influence your Discover Weekly, so your recommendations won’t get thrown off by a little out-of-character listening.

3. Daily Mix

If you like your music divided by genre, with a hint of discovery, you should try Daily Mix

What it is: Daily Mixes are personalized playlists based on the styles of music you listen to. Users can have up to six mixes, based on the variety and amount of your general listening history. So if you’re the kind of person who only listens to indie pop, you might have fewer mixes than your roommate, who wakes up to country, goes for Top 40 in the car and is also up to date on the punk rock scene. The mixes are fresh and familiar at the same time—a mix of new discoveries and tracks you already have on repeat and unbound, meaning it will load more songs instead of stopping.

How to do it: Liking a track (<3) will save it to your Songs collection, while disliking a track (X) means it won’t come up in your mix again. As your music tastes evolve, so do your mixes, so the more you listen, the better they get. It doesn’t refresh completely like Discover Weekly, but rather evolves gradually with your listening. Each mix updates with fresh songs within a day of when you last listened to it, so make sure to save the ones you love. Find your Daily Mix in Your Library if you’re using desktop (Your Music on web player). If you’re using mobile, look in Home under Made for You for free users, and in Your Library if you have Premium.

4. Release Radar

If you like keeping up with recently released music, you should try Release Radar.

What it is: Release Radar is a playlist of 30 songs is updated every Friday with music that has come out over the past few weeks, recommended just for you based on your listening patterns. It includes a mix of new music from the artists you listen to most, plus new singles we think you might like, so you never miss a new release. Maybe you’ve been listening to Justin Timberlake since your dorm room days, but didn’t consider yourself a true TN Kid until “Filthy” popped up in your Release Radar. Suddenly, you’ve got front-row tickets to his Man of the Woods tour.

How to do it: As with most playlists, the more you listen, the better it gets, and liking or disliking tracks will steer the playlist and help tailor future recommendations. Find your Release Radar in Browse when listening on desktop (Home on the web player), or in Home under Made for You on mobile.

Spotify allows you to listen to completely new tunes or current favorites mixed with some discovery. And you can always look to our playlists like RapCaviar and ¡Viva Latino! to influence what you want to listen to, right now. Either way, Spotify offers easy ways to explore music. Pro tip: Remember everything refreshes, so always be sure to save your favorites.

Celebrating a Decade of Discovery on Spotify

October 10, 2018

It’s been 10 years since Spotify officially launched for fans—and new music and artist discovery has never been the same. We built our Swedish company to create a legal, better alternative to piracy—one that helps to fairly compensate artists for their work and shape music listening and sharing via streaming.

Since October 2008, fans all over the world have enjoyed a decade of music discovery, finding new artists and tracks to fall in love with and rediscovering old favorites. Playlists such as Discover Weekly and Release Radar make finding a new song or hearing a new band as easy as opening the Spotify app and pressing play. We are now the largest music-streaming service in the world, but we remain as laser-focused on connecting fans with artists and helping them to build their careers as we were on day one.

We now have 180 million monthly active listeners across 65 countries. And as of August 31, 2018, we have paid over 10 billion euros to rights holders since launch. Music fans on Spotify can enjoy our music library of over 40 million songs and podcasts, and 3 billion-plus user-created playlists. And to date, over 2,000 genres have been identified on Spotify, among them Wonky (electronic music characterized by synths with unusual time signatures), Shimmer Pop (a Swedish cousin of indie pop and indietronica), and British Blues (the blues … with a British flavor).

Since launch, we’ve also found that “listening diversity,” or the number of artists the average user streams per month, has risen on Spotify over the past 10 years at an average of about 8 percent per year. In the past three years alone, listening diversity increased about 40 percent on the strength of new personalized and editorial playlists—meaning people are listening to an increased number of artists on a regular basis.

Between Spotify’s expert-curated playlists, such as ¡Viva Latino!, Hot Country, and RapCaviar, as well as personalized playlists such as Discover Weekly and Daily Mix, we’ve helped music fans discover a world of new artists, allowing us to pursue our goal of supporting one million creators.

In honor of this important milestone, we’re unveiling our lists of the most-streamed artists and songs, milestones and achievements, and most influential genres over the past 10 years. Take a closer look:

 

Most-streamed song each year since Spotify launch

2008: The Killers – “Human”

2009: The Black Eyed Peas – “I Gotta Feeling”

2010: Eminem, Rihanna – “Love The Way You Lie”

2011: Don Omar, Lucenzo – “Danza Kuduro”

2012: Gotye, Kimbra – “Somebody That I Used To Know”

2013: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – “Can’t Hold Us” (feat. Ray Dalton)

2014: Pharrell Williams – “Happy” – from Despicable Me 2

2015: Major Lazer, MØ, DJ Snake – “Lean On”

2016: Drake – “One Dance”

2017: Ed Sheeran – “Shape of You”

Top-streamed artists of all time

1. Drake

2. Ed Sheeran

3. Eminem

4. The Weeknd

5. Rihanna

6. Kanye West

7. Coldplay

8. Justin Bieber

9. Calvin Harris

10. Ariana Grande

Most-streamed songs of all time

1. Ed Sheeran – “Shape Of You’”

2. Drake – “One Dance”

3. The Chainsmokers, Halsey – “Closer”

4. Post Malone – “rockstar” (feat. 21 Savage)

5. Ed Sheeran – “Thinking Out Loud”

6. Major Lazer, MØ, DJ Snake – “Lean On”

7. Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee, Justin Bieber – “Despacito – Remix’”

8. Justin Bieber – “Love Yourself”

9. Justin Bieber – “Sorry”

10. The Chainsmokers – “Don’t Let Me Down”

First 10 artists to reach 1 billion streams on Spotify

1. Rihanna (2013)

2. David Guetta (2013)

3. Eminem (2013)

4. Kanye West (2014)

5. Avicii (2014)

6. Coldplay (2014)

7. JAY Z (2014)

8. Katy Perry (2014)

9. Drake (2014)

10. Pitbull (2014)

Most-streamed albums globally

1. Ed Sheeran – ÷

2. Justin Bieber – Purpose

3. Drake – Views

4. Ed Sheeran – x

5. Post Malone – beerbongs & bentleys

6. The Weeknd – Starboy

7. Drake – Scorpion

8. The Weeknd – Beauty Behind The Madness

9. Post Malone – Stoney

10. Kendrick Lamar – DAMN.

Most-streamed female artists globally

1. Rihanna

2. Ariana Grande

3. Sia

4. Beyoncé

5. Nicki Minaj

6. Adele

7. Taylor Swift

8. Selena Gomez

9. Katy Perry

10. Shakira

Total time streamed on Spotify: 16,858,080 years

Total tracks now on Spotify: 40M+

Total playlists now on Spotify: 3B+

October 2008 Flashback – top global track, artist, and album:

Most-streamed track: Coldplay – “Viva La Vida”

Most-streamed artist: Lady Gaga

Most-streamed album: Coldplay – Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends

To continue celebrating with us, check out our Decade of Discovery playlist, which features the most-streamed songs over the past 10 years on Spotify, including favorites like Avicii’s “Wake Me Up,” Hozier’s “Take Me To Church,” Kendrick Lamar’s “HUMBLE.,” Rihanna’s “Work,” Sia’s “Chandelier,” Major Lazer’s “Lean On,” the star-studded “Despacito Remix,” and more.

 

Love Discover Weekly? Thank a Hack for That

June 5, 2018

Your beloved Discover Weekly playlist started out like many other innovations at Spotify—as a line of code. But thanks to Spotify’s annual Hack Week and various Hack Days, our engineers have plentiful opportunities to turn their wildest ideas into reality.

The music industry has a long history of hackathons, with Spotify as a consistent sponsor. “In fact,” says longtime music hackathon participant and now-Spotify data/backend engineer Jen Lamere, “a lot of people have their connection to Spotify through some sort of hackathon, since a lot of the flagship products were made through those events. Spotify is keeping the flame alive.” According to Lamere, even employees who are not software engineers can use Hack Week as an opportunity to learn coding basics throughout the week.

Most Spotify engineers from the Stockholm, New York, Boston, and Gothenburg offices participate in the week, using the time they might ordinarily allot to “normal work” to make something helpful or just plain fun. The week, which is usually in the fall, culminates in a presentation or science fair (depending on the office) in which teams demo their projects. Hack Days, meanwhile, are a little more sporadic. For the User Engagement team, they occur for two days every four weeks and include a Friday night pitch session. Then, Monday and Tuesday are reserved for hacking.

If a hack works, it might make its way into a test build of the app so that a small number of Spotify users can try it out and see if it works outside the music-nerd engineering bubble. Yet some Hack Week and Hack Days projects are focused behind-the-scenes, on ideas Spotify users will never see themselves, but still benefit from. For example, lessening the time it takes for Spotify engineers to make an app update build, or helping Spotify employees find weirdly named conference rooms more quickly. “It’s all about making our lives a little easier and helping us get our jobs done,” says Lamere. Other hacks, like Discover Weekly, become integrated in platform updates, or even a part of large-scale marketing campaigns.

“Spotify’s culture and strong support of Hack Week is a fun way to let our engineers, designers and other employees express their creativity for innovating on music technology,” says Senior Data Engineer and Hack Day Emcee Tim Chagnon. “Sometimes the best benefit from Hack Week is just the experience of banding together with a new group of colleagues and learning something new by working with people from a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences.”

Check out the results of four of our recent hacks—from a site that lets you find the most dramatic part of a song, to helping immigrants better enjoy the sounds of their home country.

Where Is The Drama? (Paul Lamere)

Music Hack Day hall-of-famer Paul Lamere’s web app automatically finds the most dramatic part of any song on Spotify, and plays it for you with a single click. It works by analyzing the loudness profiles of the songs, to find the passage with the biggest build-up. To try it, simply click here while playing any song through Spotify.

NPR Podcasts Notification (Jake Lehroff)

Around 125K users searched for NPR podcasts before we had them (but now we do!) Jake Lehroff didn’t want to miss out, so when the podcasts launched, this hack sent an in-app notification to the users who had searched.

Milestone Printer (Skyler Johnson)

Skyler Johnson from Spotify’s NYC office made the handmade-looking printer pictured above that cranks out a not-so-steady stream of statistics – a new one every time an artist breaks one of our streaming records in a country with Spotify. Most hacks don’t make it to hardware status, but Skyler’s is a great visualization of what our work can do.

One Hit Wonderment (Glenn McDonald)

Glenn McDonald’s hack used Spotify data and stats to put the biggest one-hit wonders—from Tal Bachman’s “She’s So High” to Deep Blue Something’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”—in one place.

It works by ranking major artists by the percentage of their popularity that comes from their top track. Glenn also took it a step further, and made a playlist for songs that are the opposite of one-hit wonders.

How Your Daily Mix “Just Gets You”

May 18, 2018

Your music-listening experience should be exactly that—yours. We’ve come up with a bunch of ways to help you get the most out of your jam sessions (think Discover Weekly and enhanced playlists), so you’re fed the music you love, plus the occasional new tune.

Another cool tool is the Daily Mix, a feature both premium and free users can enjoy on the mobile and desktop experience. After you’ve been listening to your favorite hits on Spotify for some time, (in the new app for free users, it can be the very day you download,) the platform will serve up to six personalized playlists based on your favorite songs and related music you might enjoy. And these playlists update daily, so the head-bopping never stops.

We sat down with the minds behind Spotify’s Daily Mix playlists to learn a little more about how they work and how listeners can best use the feature.

Q: What is the Daily Mix? Where can users find it in their apps?

The Daily Mix is a set of up to six pre-mixed playlists inspired by our users’ favorite music. It can be found in “Your Library” on desktop or premium mobile, the radio tab on premium mobile, or on the home screen for users of the new free app experience.

Q: How did the Daily Mix come to be?

Daily Mix was designed to provide familiar, comfortable music within each of the user’s top listening modes. It’s designed to be the shortest path to a good musical experience. It reflects how the user actually listens, rather than matching their favorite music against predefined genres. We use clustering technology to identify distinct subgroupings within our users’ listening patterns, and then build recommendations around those, mixing in appropriate new suggestions along with the known favorites.

Q: How does the Daily Mix use listener preferences to deliver the mix? (AKA how does the playlist work from a tech standpoint?)

We consider inputs including listening history and active feedback, and look for groupings of a user’s most commonly listened to artists to create the Daily Mix. Once we’ve identified clusters of music, we extend each with recommendations using our understanding of the user’s favorite music, and then pick a balance of music they’ve played before and new content to fill out the playlist.

Q: There are multiple Daily Mix playlists served up each day. How is each one different, and how diverse can they get?

A: Each one is based on a different listening mode or grouping we identify in the user’s listening and feedback. There can be up to six, and they can be as widely diverse as the user’s history suggests. Someone who listens to a lot of different kinds of music will have more mixes than someone who primarily focuses on one style.

Q: Does the order of the Daily Mixes matter?

A: They’re ordered roughly based on how much of the user’s listening inspired each one.

Q: How is the Daily Mix different from the Discover Weekly playlist?

A: They’re intended to fulfill very different needs. Daily Mix emphasizes familiar and even favorite music with only a small amount of discovery. Even the discovery we do introduce should be less adventurous than Discover Weekly. The Daily Mix is also unbounded—for Premium users, it will load more songs as needed to keep the music going without stopping, while Discover Weekly always has 30 tracks.

Q: Can free users enjoy the Daily Mix playlist?

A: Yes! It’s available to all users who we know enough about to generate one. On the new experience for free users, it’s considered to be one of their 15 Spotify-curated playlists, so they are able to play any song on-demand.

Q: If users don’t like what is showing up in their Daily Mix, how can they adjust it?

A: The like/dislike icons allow users to steer the mix. “Disliking” will exclude the song or artist from all mixes from that point forward. Continuing to stream and listening to new music is the best way to get an entirely new mix.