How to Be a Spotify Top Artist

At the end of the year, Spotify sends everyone (with an account) a summary of their year on the app/website. They’ll tell you your Top Song and your Top Artist – that is, the stuff you listened to the most. Sometimes it’ll assign you a personality based on this information. One year they told me I was Adventurous because I “listen to non-mainstream artists 100% more than the average Spotify listener”.  Aside from the suspect percentage, I liked this personality assignment. I like to be seen as adventurous. (Handily, this year, Spotify told me that the personality of my podcast listeners was The Adventurer, so I guess we all have something in common.)

But I’ve realized that this yearly accounting of my listening habits is only an effect of the algorithm that runs the thing. It’s given me some insight into how a lot of algorithms work and, given how dominated our lives have become by algorithms, how our cultural moment tends to work. I’ll explain.

To read more of How to be a Spotify Top Artist visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.

This is Episode 350

Song: Games without Frontiers

Image from my podcast's Wrapped from Spotify this year

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Emily Rainbow Davis