Marketing experts share how Spotify shapes your music listening habits with playlists

It’s a common assumption that music streaming has changed how we listen to music in a physical sense, but a new study has revealed just how streaming has impacted consumers’ listening tastes. The research, which focused on Spotify, has found that when people listen to music via streaming, they are more likely to listen to platform-generated playlists, especially those prominently featured on Spotify’s Search Page, instead of playlists created by third parties such as major music labels.

The study also finds that users are more likely to listen to certain playlists as superstar artists are added to them, and featuring playlists prominently on Spotify attracts about two times more followers than the presence of major label superstars on playlists.

The research study, published in the journal Marketing Science, is titled, “What Drives Demand for Playlists on Spotify?” The authors of the study are Max Pachali and Hannes Datta, both of Tilburg University in the Netherlands.

“Before our work, little was known about how strongly users respond to the drivers of playlist demand,” says Datta. “We decided to more deeply explore the cause-and-effect nature and influence of curated playlists.”

The researchers found that Spotify users strongly value playlists that are featured in the app, where followers increase by about 1% if a playlist is included in a search page.

“This demonstrates Spotify’s ability to steer user engagement and listening behavior through its platform design,” says Pachali. “In comparison, we find that users are about half as sensitive to the addition of popular label artists. When a major label superstar is added to a playlist, it increases daily followers by about 0.5%.”

To conduct their research, the authors used data collected from Chartmetric.com, which tracked 34,483 playlists on Spotify from professional curators, including Spotify and other major and independent music labels. They then obtained daily data on a playlist’s number of followers from October 2019 to March 2020, along with information on which music track was available on a list and when. Ultimately, the researchers compiled comprehensive track-level data on about 2 million tracks.

“In the end, we found that playlist curators attract followers twice as easily when their list is featured on the search page, as when they add a music track from a major superstar,” says Datta. “These results imply that while superstar artists remain a relevant asset for major music labels, the professional curation of playlists in combination with the search function are even more powerful.”

Historically, major music labels controlled content distribution in the music industry and exerted their influence over how music was promoted and sold offline. This study confirms that today’s music streaming platforms now have greater influence over users’ listening behavior when compared to past practice.

Pachali concludes, “For industry players, understanding playlist curation strategies—especially the role of major label superstar content and how platform algorithms prioritize playlists on the search page—is more important than ever.”