Analytics firm Chartmetric has published its latest deep-dive into Spotify’s playlists ecosystem, reporting that the streaming service’s genres and moods playlists have more than 370 million combined followers. Yes, obviously that’s counting people more than once if they follow multiple playlists.
There’s some thought-provoking data here about a mode of listening – based on mood or current activity – that’s an increasingly-important part of the music-streaming landscape.
“A combined total of 370M+ followers enjoy the 973 Genres & Moods playlists, with a median of 123K followers for a playlist and an average of 381K,” wrote Chartmetrics’ Jason Joven, noting that while there are 38 different owners of these playlists, it’s Spotify that owns and operates 92% of them.
“The playlist group also feels quite young: slightly more than half (52%) of the playlist IDs were created after March 2017,” he added. “Though some of these new IDs were indeed revamps of a similar playlist from before, it still suggests that the pool has been undergoing a lot of experimentation.”
The report also divides Spotify’s genres and moods playlists into three categories: Context (CX) playlists are based on mood, activity, location, season, activity etc; Content (CN) playlists are based on certain genres and classifications – these include the big Spotify playlists like RapCaviar, Viva Latino and Today’s Top Hits; and Hybrid (HB) playlists are a combination of the two: for example the Bleeps & Bloops playlist has a context (gaming) but also a genre focus (electronic/dance).
The trends here are interesting: CX playlists have a much-higher median follower count than CN playlists, and are growing faster too.
And yet: “HB playlists (237K median follows) totally outstrip CN (103K) and CX (160K) categories in terms of their typical playlist follower count. They also show the highest growth over the past year with the highest follower gains by both average (88%) and median (56%) measurements… This seems natural considering that Spotify is directing both users who are context and content-oriented to the same HB playlists.”
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