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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Shaad D'Souza

The music industry is engineering artist popularity – listeners are right to be angry

A Spotify event in Mexico City – the company’s shadowy Discovery Mode feature is concerning fans.
A Spotify event in Mexico City – the company’s shadowy discovery mode feature is concerning fans. Photograph: Rodrigo Oropeza/AFP/Getty Images

For months, one question has been plaguing pop fans: why is Spotify playing me the same songs over and over again?

Every other week, a post goes viral on X asking why Chappell Roan’s Good Luck, Babe!, or Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso, or Billie Eilish’s Birds of a Feather, are constantly being put into a user’s autoplay queue by the streaming service’s algorithm, regardless of what they were listening to previously. One user got Carpenter’s recent hit Please Please Please after the extremely different vibe of Get It Sexy by St Louis rapper Sexyy Red; another complained to NME that Espresso was constantly playing after the “sad music and songwriter types” she often listens to.

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