6 ms·

They didn’t come anywhere close to the entire content library, the 300TB represents about 33% of Spotify, though it is close to 100% of the played music.

azinman2 10mo ago
Kind of nuts that 66% of their library is virtually unplayed. It’s hard to make it as a musician.
- yaur 10mo ago
  It is ridiculously easy to create an album with Suno and push it Spotify. I'm surprised its only 66% TBH
  - nkozyra 10mo ago
    1. Generate slop music nobody will ever listen to 2. ???? 3. Profit
    - seabrookmx 10mo ago
      It's actually: 1. Generate slop music no _human_ will ever listen to 2. Use a botnet to "play" this music en masse 3. Profit This is a whole arms race, with companies (such as Beatdapp) specializing in detecting fraudulent plays. Source: I work for a niche music retailer that struggles with the same issues on a smaller scale.
  - RachelF 10mo ago
    Anna's archive has a great analysis of the Spotify data. They identify a huge surge in tracks that few listen to after gen AI started. The analysis is worth reading. The distribution is (Pareto)^3 ~99% of the tracks played are 1% of the catalogue.
- krick 10mo ago
  To be completely fair, I am not certain what it means for a track to be "virtually unplayed". First off, it was striking to me how little of the "top 10 000" they published back on Christmas I recognize. I'm not sure what I expected, but 10 000 sounds like a big number, so it seemed likely to me, that if I get a random song from my playlist I could find it there. It turned out I hardly can find an artist I recognize. Ok, I can recall a song from Lady Gaga and even Billie Eilish, I've heard of Bruno Mars (cannot recall any song), but I have no idea what is "Bad Bunny", "Doechii", "Drake". I mean, I think I do have a pretty good idea what these things are (abstractly), and I probably wouldn't want to listen that. And while I knew that all this stuff is very popular, I didn't quite realize how little place in the top-10000 it leaves for the music I (and everyone I know) actually listen to. I didn't download the metadata they released (it would be hard to process it on my laptop anyway), but now I wonder how much of my 3 TB music collection is in top 100 000, or heck, even top 1M Spotify, or on Spotify at all. I also am sometimes surprised how little scrobbles some tracks get. I didn't bother to find out what this means, how many people still scrobble to Last.fm or ListenBrainz, but it is just surprising when I see that a track that I didn't consider to be obscure was scrobbled like 50 times this year. So I'm saying that music worlds seems to be terribly fragmented, even more than I imagined. So the very premise of AA backing-up 97% of Spotify (by the number of plays) may be much lesser achievement at "preserving culture" than it may sound. And of course we are about 8 years too late to backup everything, since by now half of it must be generative NN bullshit. And I'm not even sure it's in those leftover 3% (bots listen to bot-generated music too, right)?
  - iso1631 10mo ago
    > It turned out I hardly can find an artist I recognize I've heard of 9 of the top 10 and 15 of the top 20 at https://chartmasters.org/most-monthly-listeners-on-spotify/ https://chartmasters.org/most-monthly-listeners-on-spotify/ You might not listen, but surely you have heard of Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay and of course Christmas Staples of Mariah Carey and Wham?
    - krick 10mo ago
      First off, this is not the top we are talking about, since there is one that AA provided[0]. I am not sure what it matters which names exactly I've heard of, but if you are that curious: I don't know what is Ed Sheeran and Wham (but cannot vouch I've never heard their music in a supermarket), but I definitely remember "Coldplay" being mentioned in a joke onstage by a NIN member[1], but I didn't bother to check out what they are. I can imagine the faces of Taylor Swift & Justin Bieber, but cannot name any song, and I'm sure I've heard Mariah Carey somewhere, since that name is around longer than Rihanna. I have a song or two of Ariana Grande in my playlist though. Edit: Ok, I've finally googled "Coldplay". Yeah, definitely heard "Clocks" somewhere. [0] https://annas-archive.li/blog/spotify/spotify-top-10k-songs-table.html https://annas-archive.li/blog/spotify/spotify-top-10k-songs-... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qboe5CebixA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qboe5CebixA
- doubleg72 10mo ago
  Very hard if you have little talent..
- extraduder_ire 10mo ago
  From a stat I saw years ago, about the same amount of apps on the iOS app store have never been downloaded.

azinman2 10mo ago

Kind of nuts that 66% of their library is virtually unplayed. It’s hard to make it as a musician.

yaur 10mo ago
It is ridiculously easy to create an album with Suno and push it Spotify. I'm surprised its only 66% TBH
- nkozyra 10mo ago
  1. Generate slop music nobody will ever listen to 2. ???? 3. Profit
  - seabrookmx 10mo ago
    It's actually: 1. Generate slop music no _human_ will ever listen to 2. Use a botnet to "play" this music en masse 3. Profit This is a whole arms race, with companies (such as Beatdapp) specializing in detecting fraudulent plays. Source: I work for a niche music retailer that struggles with the same issues on a smaller scale.
- RachelF 10mo ago
  Anna's archive has a great analysis of the Spotify data. They identify a huge surge in tracks that few listen to after gen AI started. The analysis is worth reading. The distribution is (Pareto)^3 ~99% of the tracks played are 1% of the catalogue.
krick 10mo ago
To be completely fair, I am not certain what it means for a track to be "virtually unplayed". First off, it was striking to me how little of the "top 10 000" they published back on Christmas I recognize. I'm not sure what I expected, but 10 000 sounds like a big number, so it seemed likely to me, that if I get a random song from my playlist I could find it there. It turned out I hardly can find an artist I recognize. Ok, I can recall a song from Lady Gaga and even Billie Eilish, I've heard of Bruno Mars (cannot recall any song), but I have no idea what is "Bad Bunny", "Doechii", "Drake". I mean, I think I do have a pretty good idea what these things are (abstractly), and I probably wouldn't want to listen that. And while I knew that all this stuff is very popular, I didn't quite realize how little place in the top-10000 it leaves for the music I (and everyone I know) actually listen to. I didn't download the metadata they released (it would be hard to process it on my laptop anyway), but now I wonder how much of my 3 TB music collection is in top 100 000, or heck, even top 1M Spotify, or on Spotify at all. I also am sometimes surprised how little scrobbles some tracks get. I didn't bother to find out what this means, how many people still scrobble to Last.fm or ListenBrainz, but it is just surprising when I see that a track that I didn't consider to be obscure was scrobbled like 50 times this year. So I'm saying that music worlds seems to be terribly fragmented, even more than I imagined. So the very premise of AA backing-up 97% of Spotify (by the number of plays) may be much lesser achievement at "preserving culture" than it may sound. And of course we are about 8 years too late to backup everything, since by now half of it must be generative NN bullshit. And I'm not even sure it's in those leftover 3% (bots listen to bot-generated music too, right)?
- iso1631 10mo ago
  > It turned out I hardly can find an artist I recognize I've heard of 9 of the top 10 and 15 of the top 20 at https://chartmasters.org/most-monthly-listeners-on-spotify/ https://chartmasters.org/most-monthly-listeners-on-spotify/ You might not listen, but surely you have heard of Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay and of course Christmas Staples of Mariah Carey and Wham?
  - krick 10mo ago
    First off, this is not the top we are talking about, since there is one that AA provided[0]. I am not sure what it matters which names exactly I've heard of, but if you are that curious: I don't know what is Ed Sheeran and Wham (but cannot vouch I've never heard their music in a supermarket), but I definitely remember "Coldplay" being mentioned in a joke onstage by a NIN member[1], but I didn't bother to check out what they are. I can imagine the faces of Taylor Swift & Justin Bieber, but cannot name any song, and I'm sure I've heard Mariah Carey somewhere, since that name is around longer than Rihanna. I have a song or two of Ariana Grande in my playlist though. Edit: Ok, I've finally googled "Coldplay". Yeah, definitely heard "Clocks" somewhere. [0] https://annas-archive.li/blog/spotify/spotify-top-10k-songs-table.html https://annas-archive.li/blog/spotify/spotify-top-10k-songs-... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qboe5CebixA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qboe5CebixA
doubleg72 10mo ago
Very hard if you have little talent..
extraduder_ire 10mo ago
From a stat I saw years ago, about the same amount of apps on the iOS app store have never been downloaded.