[iso1631]

> It turned out I hardly can find an artist I recognize

I've heard of 9 of the top 10 and 15 of the top 20 at https://chartmasters.org/most-monthly-listeners-on-spotify/

You might not listen, but surely you have heard of Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay and of course Christmas Staples of Mariah Carey and Wham?

[krick]

First off, this is not the top we are talking about, since there is one that AA provided[0]. I am not sure what it matters which names exactly I've heard of, but if you are that curious: I don't know what is Ed Sheeran and Wham (but cannot vouch I've never heard their music in a supermarket), but I definitely remember "Coldplay" being mentioned in a joke onstage by a NIN member[1], but I didn't bother to check out what they are. I can imagine the faces of Taylor Swift & Justin Bieber, but cannot name any song, and I'm sure I've heard Mariah Carey somewhere, since that name is around longer than Rihanna. I have a song or two of Ariana Grande in my playlist though.

Edit: Ok, I've finally googled "Coldplay". Yeah, definitely heard "Clocks" somewhere.

[0] https://annas-archive.li/blog/spotify/spotify-top-10k-songs-...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qboe5CebixA

[pegasus]

You're a (waaay) outlier.

[krick]

Are you sure? See, my point is a conjecture (based on a reasonable assumption that I cannot be that special), that there must be really a lot of us "outliers" out there (so I'm not even sure it's reasonable to call us that).

Let's reiterate. I am well aware that more people listen to that Bad Rabbit, Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber than they listen to <random name from my playilist>, it's not really a surprise. There even is a special name for people like that, it's "celebrity". In fact, that's probably how most people who are into music (including myself, I might say) would categorize them, as "celebrities", not as "musicians" (though, mind you, of course they are musicians, as everyone who ever sang a song is, it's just that when I hear the word "musician" I don't necessarily think of Taylor Swift). Hence these people indulge themselves for not knowing who these guys are, explaining it that "they are not into celebrities".

And it's no surprise that a lot of people listen to celebrities. I mean, if Trump would release a song right now, it would become #1 on Spotify in no time (for a very short time, but still). Well, maybe not #1, but close.

But I also suppose there are a lot of people who are into music. Maybe not so many, as there are people who are into celebrities, but it's still a lot. And after seeing that top-10 000 I suddenly find it very plausible, that a lot of tracks these people call "massive hits" may turn out to be "virtually unplayed". And hence not in those "97% of Spotify (by # of plays)" that AA archived. I am not even claiming it, I'm just saying that this doesn't seem to be impossible.

For instance, any DnB fan would say that "everyone knows Noisia and Black Sun Empire". It would be absolutely laughable attempt at "preserving human culture" not to include them. Surely all of their tracks must be at least in top-5M, right? Well, after seeing top 10K I'm not so sure anymore.

Maybe you've never heard of them, but surely you've heard of Prodigy. Not a single track from Prodigy on top-10K. Or Chemical Brothers. Or Burial, or Placebo, or Nighwish, or King Crimson. These are very famous names in respective circles. There are 2 tracks from Massive Attack — both featured in super-famous movies and trending on TikTok right now. For God's sake, there are only 8 tracks from Madonna in top 10K. Versus 26 from Imagine Dragons and 124 from "Bad Bunny", whatever it is. How do you like Madonna for an obscure artist?

So, my point is that there may be a lot of people listening almost exclusively to "virtually unplayed" music. Entire discographies of (niche) cult-artists may turn out to be buried in these 66% of "virtually unplayed" tracks.

I guess I should just get the metadata and check, but I'm pretty sure that would be outside of capabilities of the hardware I have on hand, so I'm not sure how to go about that.

[squigz]

The metadata torrent is only ~200GB, which should be well within your capabilities.

https://annas-archive.li/torrents/spotify

Anyway, I think you should keep in mind 2 things:

1) 10,000 tracks really is not a lot. It sounds like a lot, but isn't. My own - relatively small - collection is nearly double that.

2) 10,000 tracks... out of 256,000,000 that AA archived.

I'd be very interested to see some more analysis done on this, particularly as it relates to, say, Last.fm statistics - but I suspect the missing music is not as significant as you think.

In any case, even if every one of those "niche" artists you list are missing from this collection, I don't think it's fair to say it's a "laughable attempt" - it's certainly better than nothing, even if it's not perfect.

[mr_toad]

The funny thing is, since the advent of streaming I no longer listen to the radio. I listen to new music, but little pop music, and I have never heard a single track from Swift, Bieber, Grande or Sheeran. Coldplay is the only act I like on that list, and the streaming services are pretty good at only playing what I like.

If they were pre-streaming artists I probably would have heard a lot of their catalog because radio played it over and over. Unfortunately you just can’t get away from the Christmas music.

[iso1631]

Sure, but I'm sure you've heard of Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber.

[squigz]

Traditional radio mostly sucks, but Soma.fm and KEXP are both great for discovering new music.