Is it a “scary Wednesday morning” or “a longing Thursday afternoon karaoke evening” or perhaps a “heartbroken karaoke evening”? It comes down to your Spotify Daylist, an algorithmically generated playlist inspired by your listening habits, which changes several times a day. Yes, you may not think it’s “Monday morning teen angst,” but Spotify knows something you don’t. Why Do Do you always listen to “The Black Parade” on Mondays?
With the sudden spike in buzz about Spotify’s daily lists, you might think the feature just came out, but it actually launched in September. However, Spotify’s daily lists (and their delightfully bizarre names) went viral this week, thanks in part to an Instagram “Add You” story template that reads: “Don’t tell me your astrology sign; Don’t tell me your astrology sign; Don’t tell me With your astrological sign. I want you to go to Spotify, find your daily list and post the title I gave you.
The person making the claim, amanita, he’s not a celebrity or influencer — he’s just a guy in Los Angeles with about 1,000 followers. But enough people reposted the template that it has now been shared more than 100,000 times and counting.
Now, searches for “Today’s List” on Spotify are up nearly 20,000%, the company told TechCrunch.
It may not be interesting to know that someone from your high school you follow on Instagram is having a “cowboy night in the Wild West,” but the prompt for these posts is probably more interesting than the content itself. The Instagram template positions daily lists as a new, more specific form of astrology, which is appropriate, because astrology and daily lists have the same appeal. They teach us something about ourselves while giving us an easy shortcut for trying to define ourselves to those around us. You are not someone who seeks attention, but rather you are a Leo. You’re not listening to emo music, you’re listening to angst teen music.
It makes sense that Spotify would tap into something akin to astrology, or other forms of spiritual-adjacent meaning-making. Over the past decade or so, astrology has Its popularity boomed Between Generation Z and Millennials. According to Allied Market Research 2021 report, the astrology industry is worth it $12.8 billionand is estimated to be worth $22.8 billion by 2031. Sensor Tower, a mobile app intelligence company, found that the top 10 astrology and horoscope apps grew more than 64% to generate more than $40 million in 2019. Perhaps not a surprise. Coincidentally, astrology became very popular at that time Religious affiliation Among young people in the United States has decreased. If people aren’t asking big questions about life in church or synagogue, they’ll ask those questions elsewhere — and that might happen on social astrology apps like Co-Star, or better yet, via Spotify’s algorithm.
Spotify’s highly personalized algorithmic features — from Spotify Wrapped to Daylists — tap into this same motivation. Instead of helping people discover new music, people use these features to find themselves, which is why Spotify is constantly adding more and more divination-inspired features. Over the past few years, Spotify Wrapped has been created Horoscope playlistsA. presented to us Tarot card To represent our year, they once hired a famous aura reader, Mystic MichaelaTo create or innovate Colored aura readings Depending on the mood of the genres the user listened to. This has become so central to Spotify’s branding that the company activated halo photography at VidCon in 2022, likely as a way to impress and build relationships with content creators.
Where does Spotify get all these highly specific music genres and moods, anyway? As many people on social media have noticed, he’s the one who created these very specific genres and moods Worth the raise. But there’s a frustrating twist to the story behind these viral daily lists.
If you want to know who’s sorted much of Spotify’s catalog into categories like “chill phonk,” “samurai trap,” and “post-minimalism,” look no further than Glenn McDonald, curator of the ever-expanding music map and database, All noise. Spotify acquired Echo nestMacDonald was working on EveryNoise, in a deal worth more than $100 million about ten years ago. Since then, MacDonald has served as a “data chemist” at Spotify, where its incomprehensibly comprehensive music databases have powered many beloved features from Discover Weekly to Daylists.
Then, because we must always remember the harsh truth that companies care about their bottom lines above all else, McDonald was laid off in December, when Spotify cut 17% of its staff. Since McDonald no longer has access to Spotify’s internal tools, some Spotify-related features no longer work, though cry From the EveryNoise community. Even then, Spotify links to EveryNoise on playlists like Voice everythingwhich includes one song from every type of Spotify track (over 6,000 songs).
Spotify’s very precise classification of music is sometimes the butt of a joke – seriously, what is “egg punk” anyway? But the project behind this strange label was done with deep care and respect for the music. However, Spotify’s leadership proves time and time again that it’s not for the love of music or podcasts. Regardless of the harsh corporate realities, it’s fun to look at our daily lists as they’re updated every few hours and hold a mirror up to our music listening and, by extension, our emotions. But perhaps the playlist we most need is ‘officecore nui friday’.