[mlavrent]

In my current role, we currently have to think about things like holidays across the world to understand if usage patterns are low due to issues or just holidays. Being an engineer at Spotify adds another layer to the usage patterns, namely artist release patterns. I'm curious if they have a team (multiple?) that work on predicting future load based on news/artist tours/release schedules?

All of this reminds me of the TV pickup [0] phenomenon in the UK that involves kettles during commercial breaks, albeit on a longer timescale and maybe less predictable.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup

[Beldin]

Interesting! Similarly, I remember an employee at water facilities telling us (~30ish years ago) that they could tell breaks in soccer games of the national team due to increased water consumption (everyone having a loo break).

[erik_seaberg]

I'm reminded of an evening fairly early on at Facebook where it took a few minutes to realize traffic had dropped because the Academy Awards were on.

[piva00]

For any artist big enough in following that could create issues there will be communications between the label and distributors.