For all of you out there who take joy in being the first person to discover a new artist this is news for you as Spotify have just announced they will soon be launching a feature that will allow users to track which now popular artist they were streaming before they were cool.
The app – which is app-tyl named Found Them First – reveals which artists you discovered first, by scanning your records and identifying which artists you were listening to before they took off. And as long as you make it into the first 15% of streams, you make the cut off, with the program then sharing a playlist of the tracks you were early to.
The app only considers “breakout artists” which is to say artists that have to have reached 20 million streams and/or a growth rate of 2000% between January 2013 and June 2015. For example:
While you might question whether our already status obsessed society needs such a feature, artist like James Bay, Vance Joy, Sheppard and Years & Years have already been using it to track which listeners were early to the party, even recording thank-you videos for the fans that helped them achieve success.
Speaking of the move, Spotify’s VP of Creative Brand Strategy Jackie Jantos said that the company loves “creating fresh ways for people to interact with music.”
Going on, she explained that “users are rewarded for listening early on, and earn some bragging rights.” Following on she was quick to point out that Spotify already has features for helping users find new artists, adding that “if you haven’t discovered any new artists early on, and want to, Spotify can help you with that!”
What she didn’t comment on was whether Spotify would be sharing the information with its partnered record labels, publishers and artist managers who would surely be eager to get their hands on it to target music to these early listening taste making users.
The other big question left un-answered is that outside of thank you videos, will these cutting edge fans be rewarding in any other ways? Free physical albums? Concert Tickets? Commission or a cut of royalties perhaps? Probably not, but fingers crossed in case.
You can check your first finds here.
