Great article. I think it’s worth noting that the big pool system tilts in favor of majors (vs. indies). Majors are better able to muscle into the queue of automatically surfaced songs (i.e. Spotify radio stream) that the hair salons, restaurants et. al tend to rely on, for 2 reasons:
- ) Majors can market big front-heavy launches, which algo’s tend to favor over the slow-burners, and
2.) Majors and their distributors have direct access to editorial at Spotify, which must filter down to an artificial bump in spins on the automated stuff.
I have to think this gives an unfair advantage to majors, even over click fraud. And if that’s the case, I doubt Spotify could ever really change to subsriber pool, given that majors have huge leverage over Spotify. So, I doubt the big pool setup is an accident. But here’s hoping, and I will do my part in September!
