Earlier this summer, Spotify launched it's widely talked about Discover Weekly playlist feature, which provides an algorithmically curated list of songs to each user's account personalized to their tastes. Early numbers from the company show that users are enthusiastic.
In the 10 weeks the service has been around, already 1 billion songs have been streamed from users automated playlists. According to Billboard, those streams added up to $7 million in royalties to the artists' labels, by the standard rate of $0.007 per stream.
Not only are users listening to their playlists, but also figures indicate that they are largely enjoying the music discoveries. Spotify said 71 percent of weekly listeners saved at least one track to their own customized playlists and 60 percent of Discover Weekly users stream at least five of the provided tracks before abandoning the list.
Just five songs out of the 30 that are renewed each week might not actually be all that much, but it shows that users are coming back for a product they like. The fact that 71 percent of users saved any tracks at all is impressive as well, given that automated music discovery isn't always the most accurate predictive measure. This could be a sign that the growing Spotify is on to something and posing a threat to the human-curated model of Apple Music, which has yet to release numbers on how many users have stayed with the service since the initial three month free trial expired for early adopters this month.
"A billion thank YOUS to all of the music fans who listen, discover and share music and artists every day through Discover Weekly," the music streaming company said on its website. "The entire Spotify team behind DW is overwhelmed with this amazing response!"
Listen to my personal Discover Weekly playlist generated on Monday Oct. 5 below.
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