Spotify Skip-Rates Aren’t as Important a Playlist Metric as Many Believe, Says Exec
Turns out all the hype around Spotify "skip-rates" -- when a listener skips a track less than 30 seconds into listening -- might not be such an important metric in the service's playlist placements…
Turns out all the hype around Spotify “skip-rates” — when a listener skips a track less than 30 seconds into listening — might not be such an important metric in the service’s playlist placements as previously thought.
“I would once and for all like to kill the myth that it’s just about something called skip rate,” Spotify’s Nordic head of shows and editorial Daniel Breitholtz told an audience at the Slush Music conference in Helsinki, Finland, on Wednesday (Nov. 29), Music Ally reports. “That is simply not the truth. Yes, skip-rate is a metric that we editors take into consideration on how to move on songs, but it’s just one metric out of many.”
As Spotify’s playlists become an increasingly important element of breaking new artists, record labels are focused on finding whatever upper hand they can in securing coveted placements for their acts. But as Breitholtz explained, there’s no single key to success here. “There’s a bunch of stuff that we take in to consideration,” he said.
Breitholtz explained the streaming service’s roughly 140 editors working on more than 4,500 playlists around the world also consider how many people save a song onto their own playlists, repeat listens within playlists, play-through rates, artists’ historical data and more.
As well, Breitholtz sought to correct common misconceptions about how the services biggest playlists are curated.
“There is a big misconception that it’s just a one-person show, running the whole things. That’s totally not the case. We take decisions as groups regarding the bigger playlists,” he said. “The decision on where we put a song, in what playlists, is based on historical data, but also in all honesty on the gut feeling of the editors.”
He continued, “Every track we have is ultimately at the mercy of you, the listener, the fan. It’s all about the data we get on how you listen to the song in our playlist. That’s the foundation from which we take all the decisions on where do we go with the song in this playlist universe of Spotify.”