At Least Spotify Is Trying
Decades into the realm of streaming music, people are still coming down on Spotify for the perception that it’s only paying a pittance to the artists who write the music on which the entire platform functions. I’ll never get why these critics focus only on one side of the contract. Spotify can’t force anybody to do business with them; whoever holds the rights to the music gets to decide whether or not to stream on Spotify. A solution seems straightforward - sell your music for what it’s worth and force Spotify to pay the appropriate price. So why aren’t people boycotting the record labels? Spotify is only reselling something that it purchased from somebody else at a deep discount.
Anyway, Spotify debuted “Playlist In A Bottle” today and spoiler alert, it’s a waste of time. The idea is that you make a mix in January and then you listen to it in December. Newsflash - most of us do this on a weekly basis; we make playlists packed with tunes we’re into at that particular time in our lives and we listen to those playlists until we get tired of them. Then we go back to them at some point in the future.
“Playlist In A Bottle” offers an interesting variation to this, however — you don’t make the mix yourself. You answer three or more questions like “What song would you most like to hear played live in 2023?” Then you select the song and move to the next question. After three questions, you can either finish or add more questions to answer. When you’re done, Spotify creates an algorithmic playlist (that you don’t see) and sends it to you in December. It’s basically what the service currently does with its Daily Mixes, the feature where Spotify looks at the different music that you listen to, separates that music into respective genres, and makes playlists that include similar tracks from other artists. The thing is, these lists are generally pretty good. As someone who abhors the idea of letting others decide music for me, these lists are generally rock solid and I listen to them frequently. So basically they’re using a function that they already offer. The only difference is that after Spotify creates your mix, it holds onto it until December.
Spotify’s annual “Wrapped” feature proved to be a game changer. It taps into the most fundamental aspect of humanity — the compulsion to think about oneself. Apple Music copied them and even Peloton followed suit. What an easy way to drive user engagement — share with them some of the information that you track about them and set it to some jazzy music. It’s brilliant in its simplicity.
Regardless of one’s opinion of Spotify’s compensatory schema, they deserve recognition for relentlessly using their data to offer new ways for subscribers to stay engaged.