Average Spotify User Discovers 26 New Artists Every Month
An official stat from Spotify buried in a press release announcing a partnership with SFX's Beatport and some basic math net a statistic that should make both independent artists and established record label executives smile.
"Two billion times every month, our listeners discover an artist they’ve never heard of through a Spotify playlist" according to Ken Parks, Chief Content Officer, Spotify. We already know that Spotify has 75 million users.
Therefore, on average, a Spotify user discovers 26+ new artists every month.
The math:
2 billion new artist discoveries per month
÷ 75 million Spotify users
26.66 average new discoveries per user
Of course, discovery, retention and monetization are all different problems. But the sheer number of new artists discovered each month – compared, for example, to an era of Top 40 radio – shows the potential of music streaming to revolutionize, not just how we listen to music, but what we listen to, as well.
MORE: SFX's Beatport To Power Major EDM Hub On Spotify
So if Spotify has 26 million songs, the odds of my song being discovered is one in a million, or nearly the same as the odds of being hit by a lightning or dying from flesh eating bacteria. (Yes, I ran a search “statistical odds”. 🙂 )
However, at its end, Spotify’s odds of being discovered by this is 1:1. So if I grokked this right, *I* should accept a laughable fraction of a cent for my music from Spotify in order for *Spotify* to be discovered, not me, so they can then go on pushing artists from labels like Sony who own Spotify? If there’s a mistake in my reasoning feel free to point it out.
Yeah this is the kind of articles that are just propaganda for Spotify… I don’t think anyone on the planet will tell you they use Spotify to discover new music… Soundcloud, Bandcamp or new guys like Tradiio are at least viable solutions for us artists.
Hey George!
I’m Miguel, co-founder of Tradiio. On Tradiio we’re being able to manage to deliver listens to almost every artists that we have with us! We don’t have the infinite millions of users as Spotify, but you’re chances to get new fans with us are really high 😉
https://medium.com/tradiio-team/how-tradiio-managed-to-have-97-of-it-s-songs-played-5587357430bc
Nic are you seriously saying “no-one on the planet will tell you they use Spotify to discover new music”?? That is complete nonsense…
Ooh, I can’t wait to be discovered on Spotify and then get a big old check in the mail for 7¢…
Ken Parks, Chief Content Officer, Spotify.
This article is totally meaningless. Define ‘discovering artists’