If you use Spotify for listening to music, today’s the day the service gives you its annual analysis of your listening habits. Apparently, I’ve listened to Spotify for nearly 200 hours this year. (More than I thought, given how much I like its classical-only rival, IDAGIO.) My top artist was Cake, and I’m in the service’s top 1 percent of Cake listeners. (My favorite album is Pressure Chief.) And my most-listened-to track is Jose Feliciano’s cover of “California Dreamin” — which makes sense because I made a mix of beloved covers this year, and that’s the first track.
Spotify is the service that has most taught me to respect algorithmic observation of our behavior. Years ago, it started issuing bang-on guesses about what new music I’d like to hear in an automatically generated “Discover Weekly” playlist.
Did any of you learn something about your listening habits today?