The information provided by Spotify has become a necessary tool for every artist, as it can help us market our music and create ad campaigns to attract more fans outside our already-existing audience. Data like new followers, total streams, and monthly listeners are essential, but there’s another tool not as well known, especially since it’s a little hard to find: the Spotify popularity index.
Are you ready to find better ways to get your music to the right listeners? If so, let’s find out more about this powerful tool at your disposal.
What is the Spotify popularity index?
Here’s the brief: Spotify tracks how popular songs are relative to all other songs.
Basically, there’s a value inside Spotify that ranks all artists and their tracks on a 0 to 100 scale. This value is the popularity index and shows how popular a song is on the streaming platform, summing up the popularity of all songs from every artist.
Additionally, having a high rank will improve a track’s discoverability within the platform. When you release a song, the first days will be crucial to determine its popularity and future success.
Sadly, the Spotify popularity index is not visible on the artist page like the monthly listeners and followers are or the in the Spotify for artists dashboard, or on the desktop or mobile app. It’s only available within the Spotify Developer API, and from there, you can find it through other external tools (as I’ll explain below).
However, this index determines how Spotify’s algorithm recommends your music to new listeners, adds it to playlists, and makes it easier to find.
How the Spotify popularity index works
In short, the Spotify popularity index is calculated by:
- Total streams of a song.
- How recently a song has been played.
- The frequency that a track has been played.
Spotify states that something crucial for the popularity index is how many times a song is played and when such plays take place, which means that the more recent your streams, the more popular Spotify considers your track.
This also means that your tracks need regular streams, as songs played in the past are less popular than those played more recently. This is also why it’s so crucial nowadays to release frequently and maintain a constant level of streams: by releasing new singles, you’ll encourage listeners to explore your discography, hence increasing the number of streams of other songs aside from your latest publication.
When does an artist or song become popular?
On a scale of 0 to 100, 0 means the track has no popularity, and 100 is among the most popular tracks on the platform. But when does a song become relevant according to the Spotify algorithm?
There is some discussion on what the actual “magic” number is. Some people consider that you’ll notice some benefits once your popularity index goes beyond the 20/30 threshold.
The benefits of a high score on the popularity index
The popularity index is not just a nice number to know how much your listeners are playing your music. It offers a perspective on your rating, how Spotify’s algorithm will value your music, and how likely it’ll add it to different playlists.
When your popularity index increases, the algorithm will notice your music and place it in the algorithmic playlists, and by now, I’m sure you know how important that is. Once that happens, you can remain on those playlists indefinitely and keep your streams fresh. It also will benefit from getting exposure to your music and reaching new potential fans.
Let’s take a look at the benefits of a high popularity index.
Personalized playlists
Playlists are a fantastic way to get your music to millions of potential listeners and fans. Among the millions of playlists that populate Spotify, personalized playlists are the ones we don’t have much control over because they’re based on algorithms.
Personalized playlists are unique to each user, built after Spotify’s algorithm builds data on your listening habits. The habits include the music you play, like, share, save, and even those tracks you skip. Think of them as a personalized mix tape with all those songs you loved and played multiple times for a while or that mix your friends who know you very well give you to listen to because they know you’ll love it.
Algorithmic playlists differ from editorial playlists because you cannot pitch your music to them. Although editorial playlists are constantly updated, algorithmic playlists tend to have a longer placement duration.
Let’s look at each personalized playlist you could access by ranking higher in the popularity index.
Discover Weekly
This personalized playlist seems to be a favorite for Spotify users. It updates every Monday and brings you 30 new songs that Spotify thinks you may like after monitoring your behavior during the previous seven days. This selection occurs thanks to three factors:
- Collaborative filtering. It’s based on listeners with similar tastes. Spotify analyzes which other songs this group of people listens to and selects those you haven’t listened to, creating a personal Discover weekly for each listener.
- Natural language processing. It consists of Spotify digging on the internet to find what people say about your music. It looks for online magazines, blogs, and music reviews to see the common tags related to your music.
- Audio analysis. Spotify uses neural networks to analyze your music and understand it at a more “human” level. It considers factors such as liveness, loudness, energy, key, and danceability.
Release Radar
Release Radar is your Friday playlist. It includes new music from artists you follow or have listened to before, plus some others recommended by Spotify. It only contains new music that you haven’t heard before. If a user skips your song, it won’t be placed on their personalized playlist.
To get your music on Release Radar, you must pitch it at least seven days before the release date. The requirements for pitching your music can be found on the Spotify for Artist help website.
Daily Mix
Daily Mix consists of six autogenerated playlists based on the various genres you enjoy listening to. It includes songs from your On Repeat and Repeat Rewind playlists too. With Daily Mix, you can choose a playlist with your favourite music waiting in categories, so you listen to the genres you want to hear with a shuffle playlist from your favourites.
Spotify Radio
Spotify Radio is a playlist based on artists or albums you stream. It usually begins when a playlist or album you are listening to stops and Spotify provides you with other music you might like. This playlist, unlike others, cannot be downloaded, but you can save the songs you like so they might be placed on future Daily Mix playlists.
The best way to be featured on a listener Spotify Radio is by growing your fanbase and followers, increasing total streams, and ranking higher on the popularity index. Only then will Spotify know your music is likeable and will recommend it.
On Repeat and Repeat Rewind
These two playlists are very similar. They both compile your favorite music you listen to most frequently.
- On Repeat includes the songs you have streamed the most recently.
- Repeat Rewind features the songs you have streamed the most in the past months.
On Repeat and Repeat Rewind features the songs each person has spent time listening to and sharing. As an artist, you must keep your popularity index to be on these playlists.
Your popularity index will provide you with many opportunities to showcase your music. More popularity means more visibility, and more visibility means more streams, follows and saves that will get you into discovery playlists, which then will get you into the personalized playlists to your most engaged fans.
How to find your Spotify popularity index
It’s time to find out how and where you can find your popularity index. It’s currently only available through the Spotify developers API. Luckily, there are a few tools online that can help us find this metric and other statistics to use to our advantage.
Chartmetric
Chartmetric is a marketing platform that delivers extensive social and streaming analytics in visual graphics to create effortless marketing strategies. Chartmetric provides analytics on a global digital artist rank, engagement rank, playlist tracking, and audience demographics, among other data, and monitors your core metrics on all major streaming platforms.
With their playlist tracking, you can easily find out which ones you are currently featuring and learn more about your audience.
Chartmetric is free to use with limited features, but it offers a Premium and Artist Plan upgrade whenever you need more.
Musicstax
Musicstax is a free and easy-to-use tool for finding your Spotify popularity index. You can search by artist, track, or album name and find metrics on popularity, tempo, key, loudness, danceability, energy, positiveness, and more.
This tool was developed by a single man you can support through Buy Me a Coffee if you find Musicstax useful, but it’s free to use if you don’t want to pay for it.
Songstats
Songstats offers real-time music data for artists and labels by connecting your Spotify for Artist with your Songstats account to comprehensively understand your audience, playlist conversion, and chart positions.
It provides artists and labels with measuring tools for your popularity index, followers, monthly listeners, and streams on a deeper level than what Spotify for Artist offers.
Songstats offers three plans and a one-week free trial for each plan. It doesn’t have a free version.
How to increase your Spotify Popularity Index
I’m sure you’re eager to start working on increasing your Spotify popularity index and get all the benefits you can achieve. The good news is that you don’t need to do anything out of the ordinary, and the best way to get the best results is by doing the things you should already be doing.
Pre-save campaigns for new releases
Whenever you’re releasing a new song, it is highly recommended to launch a Pre-save campaign to get as much as saves as possible on the first day. The listener-to-save ratio is an essential factor in increasing your popularity index.
Submit to editorial playlists
Pitching to editorial playlists does not guarantee to be placed on them. However, your chances of appearing on the Release Radar will increase, and I have already highlighted the importance of these personalized playlists for your popularity metric.
Never stop promoting on other social platforms.
Running ad campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, sharing on your social media platforms, engaging with fans and other artists with reels, and keeping gaining momentum. It’s what Spotify likes to see, and if you are constantly promoting your work, you’ll get noticed by the platform.
Final thoughts
Thanks to the data collected, Spotify can understand users and predict what they want to hear in the future. As an artist, you should be aware of how Spotify recommends music to listeners, as it can help you tailor your strategy and maximize your audience over time.
I know many users don’t like to think in numbers or feel like they’re relying too much on AI. However, that’s how Spotify works; it focuses on building exposure for the right tracks by defining users’ habits and what they like and don’t like.
Spotify does not force music on new users; it presents you with new music you might like based on what you already listen to. Of course, it doesn’t always work, and that’s why the algorithm constantly changes to deliver the best results to its users.
By understanding the algorithm and how it affects the popularity index, we can use this knowledge to market and share our music more effectively.
Have you looked into your Spotify popularity index? I’d recommend starting with Musicstax to have a general idea of your performance. You might identify new opportunities for yourself and your music.
