Like can you put Billie Eilish and Fiona Apple in the same playlist? And we’ve been thinking of experimenting with cross-generational playlists as well. Last year with Lorem and Pollen we started doing cross-genre playlists. And then we have a bunch of genre playlists. Historically you've got big pop playlists like Today's Top Hits, and they're flagships in their own rights. It's like a gigantic pretzel, intertwined in different ways. Even niche in a global scale is pretty big.īut there's definitely a system of interconnectivity. They're just different audiences and different sounds. And I wouldn't consider one better or worse, whether it's a playlist with 2,000 users or Today's Top Hits with 25 million. Ross: Is there a hierarchy of playlists that songs make their way through?Įrlich : I wouldn't say there's a hierarchy. Yours might not look like mine, but the songs are picked by our editors. One example of that type of personalized playlist is Beast Mode.

We do “algatorial” - which is human curated and then machine personalized. We started with 100% human curation, now there's more algorithm and machine learning. It's a great way to leverage the data we have, and we love the fact that so many of our users are not only fans but also really knowledgeable with great taste. Fresh Finds actually takes into account tastemakers who are not internal.

But there are also a lot of independent playlists. Ross: How many playlists does Spotify curate?Įrlich : We have 3,000 Spotify playlists. But no one's still looking at the screen by the last song. The first song on a playlist will always have the highest skip ratio because people are engaged. Then there’s the skip ratio, but it's all relative. We also look at the “lean-back versus lean-forward,” which is whether people are actively searching for the song or just hearing it from editorial tools.

Ross: What are metrics you look at to determine next steps for a song on a playlist?Įrlich : We'll look at the time people spend on the songs - it takes 30 seconds of listening for it to count as an official stream. Going through the pitch tool is the only way. If anyone tells you to pay for playlisting, it's a lie. When people use our name falsely we try to stop them. If I could snap my fingers and make them all disappear, I would. We don't talk to any of these people at all. There's absolutely no promo in the streaming world. What's your take on that?Įrlich : I hate it. Ross: There are third-party promotional companies convincing artists to pay them to pitch to Spotify for playlisting.

Playlist push curator