It’s often the job of a DJ to introduce new music to the world. In 2015, most of us don’t listen to radio, instead preferring streaming music services like Spotify. A key part of ensuring you discover new music you like, is having good techniques to uncover new artists in the genres you like.
By adding friends with similar music interests, you may very well have a new favourite band as a result of recommendations that came from a friend.
In a new website from Spotify, they’re now allowing you to see how influential you’ve been in the process of discovery for your friends.
You can see your ‘Found Them First’ discoveries at spotify.com/foundthemfirst
To be honest this is really a not so humble brag that you’re awesome at the game that is music. You get to see which breakout artists you discovered early on. That is artists that went on to accumulate 20 million streams and a growth rate of 2000% between January 2013 and June 2015. It’ll show you the first date you listened to the artist, and reveals a Spotify-generated, customised playlist of other similar breakout artists you have yet to discover. The top 1-15% of listeners are considered “early listeners” and will be able to see this ranking.
“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,” said Jackie Jantos, VP of Creative and Brand Strategy, Spotify. “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!”
To personally reward their dedicated fans, artists including Vance Joy, Sheppard, James Bay, Years & Years, and Rixton created appreciation videos to thank their early listeners. The vignettes will appear in users’ Found Them First experience for the musicians they discovered.
I would love to see these influencers gain some level of promotion (maybe an icon on their avatar) inside the Spotify apps on the desktop and mobile apps. It’d be great to see a leaderboard of people in the top 10-15% who are the biggest influencers on Spotify.
