Spotify: How is a track's popularity value determined? [closed]

Question

I've been working with the spotify meta data api, and I was trying to figure out exactly what the popularity field of a track meant (represented as a float, 1 being popular, 0 not). I checked if there was a linear correlation between the float value and total plays as listed in spotify, but there definitely is not. I found three tracks by the same artist whose popularity values were all 0.61, one had 1.7 million plays, one had 1.6 million and another had ~140,000. Unfortunately playcounts are not part of their meta data api.

Does anybody know how they determine this value for each track? I'm guessing it might be a relative fraction of (plays/time on spotify) compared to the track with the most plays/time but I can't prove that. If you know I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks

Answer 1

Spotify's popularity is indeed based on the number of streams, but instead of total plays, it's based on a short timeframe. This is why you'll often see a more popular number on #1 on an artist profile that has less plays than the #2.

We have used the API number as a percentage in our [Stream Popularity][1], giving people insight in the current popularity of their track. So keep in mind this is a number the can increase, but just as easily decrease.

Good luck!

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Note:
link above has been removed because it was pointing to a phishing website. For reference here is a link from webarchive
https://web.archive.org/web/20141009072315/http://www.streampopularity.com/