I noticed that the track “Canon (Primo)” by Justice only has 5,815 plays on Spotify, even though every other track on the album has millions of plays. How is this possible? I know it’s just an interlude track that you wouldn’t listen to unless you’re listening to the full album, but still, this play count seems extremely low. What’s going on here? (I’m hoping my attached screenshot shows up here)
It seems that Spotify doesn’t accurately count plays for tracks under 30 seconds. I had a look through some of the albums I know of with short tracks and here’s what I found:
In fact I found the MGMT album 11•11•11 has a 26 second long track with no reported plays.
So while it’s probably true that people are listening to fewer full albums than they used to in the days of vinyl or CD, it seems more likely to do with Spotify only paying royalties on tracks over 30 seconds and the discussion surrounding that.
Very interesting, thanks!