For those music fans who can't seem to stop saying "I liked their earlier stuff before they made it big," Spotify has a new web app that satisfies your inner hipster called "Found Them First."
Once you login to Spotify's microsite, the web app runs through the statistics about your listening habits and identifies the artists, if any, you listened to before they became breakout artists. You'll get the distinction of "first listener" if you were among the first 15 percent of the artist's listening base, thus forever cementing your status as a hipster trendsetter.
What distinguishes a breakout artist is another point of debate. Here, Spotify defines it as an artist who has accumulates at least 20 million streams and a growth rate of at least 2,000 percent from January 2013 to June 2015, according to Billboard. That's a pretty high standard to live by and a little subjective, given there are plenty of critical success that haven't reached those numbers but are talked about in certain music circles. Still, Spotify has to draw the line somewhere and for an algorithm that only considers popularity by the numbers and keeps all the emotional aspects of music on the sideline, it's a pretty fun app that can give you some major bragging rights.
If Spotify can't find any artists in your catalog that fit these qualifications, don't worry. There's still time to get your music tastes on the right track and find the artists that will soon become the next big thing. Spotify offers up a playlist called "Find Them Next" so you can discover the up-and-coming artists of tomorrow.
It's not clear if the playlist is the same for all users or if it's curated to your specific tastes, but either way, I got an eclectic mix of artists I've never heard of before. It's also worth noting that Spotify is only gathering info from its own service, so you have to be a pretty active Spotify user for this to work for you. As for me, I use Google Play Music most frequently, but was still credited with discovering Houndmouth within the first 7 percent of all listeners. However, most of that credit goes to a friend who sent me the band's album over Spotify messages.
See whose career you had a hand in shaping by visiting the web app. Listen to the breakout band Houndmouth below, since I'm such a trendsetter.
