Playlist Stats
Why is there no data about playlists published on Spotify (apart from the number of 'saves')? The following statistics would help people find playlists, and could also help playlist curators improve their content:
Stats about the playlist content:
- List of genres represented in the playlist (percentage of songs in each)
- Number of individual artists in the playlist and percentage of songs from each
- Chart showing the release dates of the songs listed, or just percentage of songs from each decade represented
- Country location of each artist in the list
- languages represented in the playlist (and percent of instrumental songs)
Stats about the listeners of the playlist:
- How many people have listened to the playlist in the last week/month?
- How long did they listen?
- How often did they skip songs?
- Which songs did they skip the most?
- Do users engage with the songs/artists while listening (click on the song/artist page or look at song DNA or the artist profile for example)?
- How often do users like or follow a song/artist while listening to the playlist?
- Which songs/artists received the most engagement from listeners of the playlist?
- Where are the listeners located?
These stats would go a long way towards identifying the best quality playlists, and could be combined into an overall 'engagement score' which could then be used to rank playlists.
If you think about it, Spotify's main asset (really, it's only asset) is it's massive user base. To the extent that they can get users more engaged with the platform, they will secure and expand their lead in the market. I publish playlists on Spotify and artists publish music there because that's where the users are. But, if Apple, YouTube music Deezer or SoundCloud start giving useful stats about how users listen to my playlists, I'm moving in a second. No joke, I have a playlist with >1000 saves, and I will start again from scratch the second a platform starts giving useful stats!