Recommendations have always been at the heart of the Spotify experience. Friends and family share their favorite music, podcasts, audiobooks, and more from Spotify millions of times each month. That’s because word of mouth is one of the most powerful ways for people to discover their next favorite track. Spotify users have told us they...
Spotify’s payment model also adds a ton of bias to their suggestions. Artists need to hit a threshold number of listens a month to get paid at all, so Spotify ends up just suggesting music from artists they are already paying, rather than letting other folks hit that threshold. It’s also why the “shuffle” feature never actually shuffles a whole playlist before starting to repeat songs. If you really pay attention the songs that get repeated by the shuffle algorithm are the ones from bigger artists to try and keep smaller groups from getting paid at all.
Spotify’s payment model also adds a ton of bias to their suggestions. Artists need to hit a threshold number of listens a month to get paid at all, so Spotify ends up just suggesting music from artists they are already paying, rather than letting other folks hit that threshold. It’s also why the “shuffle” feature never actually shuffles a whole playlist before starting to repeat songs. If you really pay attention the songs that get repeated by the shuffle algorithm are the ones from bigger artists to try and keep smaller groups from getting paid at all.