Spotify: Found Them First

Spotify has launched a new facility that will display to users which artists they ‘discovered’ at an early stage before they broke through to commercial success.

Although this should be called ‘Spotify Smugness’ or at least ‘Losing my Edge’ it’s actually called ‘Found Them First’, which still sounds slightly obnoxious to The Gen’s ears.

The platform shows the first date a user listened to a breakout artist and of course then generates a customised playlist of other similar breakout artists. The top 15% of listeners are considered “early listeners” and will be able to see this ranking. Finally, listening to music has been quantified and turned into a fairly pointless leaderboard! On the flip side, no more lying about how you heard Catfish and the Bottlemen before anyone else as the data will tell a different story.

Interestingly, Spotify defines a breakout artist as having accumulated 20 million streams and a growth rate of 2000% between January 2013 and June 2015.

VP of Creative and Brand Strategy at Spotify Jackie Jantos said: “We love creating fresh ways for people to interact with music. This experience is an ode to the fans who truly love discovering new artists. Users are rewarded for listening early on, and earn some bragging rights. Of course, if you haven’t discovered any new artists early on, and want to, Spotify can help you with that”!