Spotify and Shazam ‘Predict’ the Songs of Summer 2017 🔮
…And you can probably guess most of them.
More music is being listened to by more people than ever before, with around 1.2 billion songs streamed every day in the US alone. Aside from the handsome royalties streaming is finally generating for major labels, the data behind these songs is possibly just as valuable.
In fact, Spotify, Shazam, YouTube and Pandora have all beefed up their analytics tools in the past year, in effort to save face from low royalty payouts in the past.
(But if data is what they’re offering, we’ll take what we can get.)
Over Memorial Day weekend, Spotify and Shazam released their “Songs of Summer 2017” predictions, based on each’s proprietary algorithms and billions of data points.
Shazam weighs their predictions using the following metrics:
- WATCH list: Early signs of growth potential
- TRENDING list: Strong trend, sustained growth
- HOT list: Flying through the charts
Here are Shazam’s Top 10 picks: (and how they were evaluated)
Luis Fonsi — “Despacito”
DJ Khaled — “I’m The One”
Harry Styles — “Sign Of The Times”
Charlie Puth — “Attention”
Selena Gomez — “Bad Liar”
Shawn Mendes — “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back”
Lil Uzi Vert — “OX TOUR Llif3”
Julia Michaels — “Issues”
Thomas Rhett & Maren Morris — “Craving You”
Blackbear — “do re mi”
Spotify pegged their own “genre and trends experts,” as well as playlists, charts, and social engagement for the company’s predictions (conveniently published a day after Shazam’s).
Here are Spotify’s Summer Picks:
Selena Gomez — “Bad Liar”
Liam Payne ft. Quavo — “Strip That Down”
DJ Khaled — “I’m The One”
Camila Cabello — “Crying in The Club”
Lady Gaga — “The Cure”
Shawn Mendes — “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back”
Katy Perry ft. Nicki Minaj — “Swish Swish”
Future — “Mask Off”
Imagine Dragons — “Thunder”
Kendrick Lamar — “DNA”
Niall Horan — “Slow Hands”
Luis Fonsi — “Despacito” (Remix)
Miley Cyrus — “Malibu”
Logic ft. Alessia Cara, Khalid — “1–800–273–8255”
Lil Uzi Vert — “XO TOUR Llif3”
If this looks like a lot of the same, you’re right. It’s no surprise that there is crossover between the two, given that Spotify is the most popular streaming player and Shazam is a complimentary discovery tool. Thus, a play and discovery in the same room would count a “vote” on both platforms.
Still, you probably could have picked half of these songs if you’ve listened to any terrestrial radio in the last 3 months. After all, every single “prediction” is already charting on the Billboard Hot 100. (These are our most innovative tech companies?)
Predicting a summer anthem is no easy feat. I so badly wanted Desiigner’s “Tiimmy Turner” to break into legendary status in summer ’16, but it never caught on with the mainstream (despite the 123 million streams).
That being said, if you prefer Spotify to FM radio, you can listen to a summer compilation below.
Playlist: Songs of Summer 2017
Notably absent from this summer’s predictions is Pandora’s Next Big Sound, which doesn’t always “correctly” predict the hits, but at least exposes music trending on the fringe (ever heard of Tash Sultana, SahBabii, or Billie Eilish?).
In the spirit of predicting emerging indie artists, music blog Pigeons and Planes paired with analytics company Indify to track trending musicians across SoundCloud, Facebook, and the meme-o-sphere.
Check out Indify’s findings here: 6 Ways New Artists Can Break in 2017, and listen to their playlist of emerging tracks below.
Playlist: Algorithmic 📈
UPDATE: A few days after the publishing of this article, Pandora released their own Songs of the Summer 2017 predictions, and analyzed the Essential Ingredients For a Summer Jam according to NextBigSound data.
