🗨️ spotify numbers are not the pulse of culture, it’s the music that plays in a doctor’s office.

[Macklemore is] the hottest act there is right now, but you’d never know it from looking at his popularity on Spotify, where “Can’t Hold Us” is already regressing to the mean. This isn’t necessarily a problem for Spotify, which has only leaned further into passive listening in the last few years. But it really is a problem for the music industry, which has become ever more insistent that streaming data are the tea leaves that unlock the zeitgeist. These numbers are not the pulse of culture, it’s the music that plays in a doctor’s office. Streaming Does Not Measure Relevance on Garbage Day