The Messy Mystery of Spotify’s “This Is” Playlists
On June 13, when Taylor Swift announced the summer release date for her upcoming album Lover, Spotify made an interesting decision on where to direct its users.
That same day, Spotify’s Twitter account posted a URL not to Swift’s previous singles or albums on the platform, but rather to the playlist “This Is Taylor Swift.” Owned and maintained by Spotify’s in-house editorial staff, the playlist currently contains 40 songs, including Swift’s latest single “You Need to Calm Down” at the top and hits from Reputation, 1989, Fearless and other albums scattered throughout.
Two days earlier, the Spotify Twitter account posted a similar call-to-action for Anderson .Paak — instructing followers to stream the “This Is Anderson .Paak” playlist to revisit the artist’s albums Ventura and Oxnard. Unlike with Taylor Swift, this post was not tied to any release announcements, as those two albums had already been out in the world for two and seven months, respectively. Rather, the copy in the post promoted Anderson .Paak off-cycle through the lens of his own biography, correctly drawing connections between the titles of his albums and his home state. “This Is Anderson .Paak” also runs much longer than Swift’s playlist, spanning over 60 songs totaling nearly four hours.
In both instances, Spotify was explicitly using its “This Is” playlist franchise to drive consumption of both new and old releases for major artists of the moment.
In fact, artists and labels are becoming increasingly aware that the “This Is” series plays a significant role on the streaming service — not only in driving catalog consumption, but also in representing an artist’s identity and creative evolution, and in giving loyal fans a convenient, one-stop shop for exploring artists’ discographies without having to scroll manually through Spotify artist profiles.
Yet, as I describe in detail below, the way “This Is” playlists are allocated and curated is based on a set of relatively opaque, arbitrary criteria that leaves a surprising group of independent and legacy artists behind. If Spotify is serious about building scalable tools for artists of any career stage to control their presence on the platform, channels like “This Is” should arguably be prioritized front and center, especially given how prominently Spotify is promoting them.
Spotify’s search function prioritizes “This Is” playlists above nearly everything else
For all the talk about personalized recommendation on Spotify, the platform’s search functionality is actually quite homogenous in what it displays to users — at least in the context of searching for a specific artist.
When you type an artist’s name into the search bar on Spotify’s mobile or desktop app, your results will always be displayed in the following order: 1) the artist page, 2) their “This Is” playlist, 3) their branded radio station and then 4) editorial playlists that feature their music. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never listened to a “This Is” playlist before; if that playlist exists for a particular artist, it will always show up as the second result.
It makes sense to prioritize “This Is” playlists so heavily: if a user is searching for a specific artist, the results should be strongly connected to that artist’s identity and catalog. There’s also a significant commercial incentive for both streaming services and artists, in that the “This Is” franchise has an unusually high level of engagement compared to other playlists on the platform. For instance, Chartmetric found last year that playlists like “This Is Taylor Swift” and “This Is Bad Bunny” had lower follower-to-estimated-listener ratios than more activity-driven playlists like “Dance Party” or “Indie Workout.”
For artists who don’t have an official “This Is” playlist, that slot will simply be replaced by another Spotify editorial playlist — but the rest of the display structure prevails, in terms of the artist page appearing first and the radio station appearing third:
Who qualifies for a “This Is” playlist?
As implied above, not every artist gets a “This Is” playlist, and the exact qualification threshold remain unclear.
An artist-manager friend recently sent me the below screenshot from an email exchange with Spotify’s Artist Support team, in which the manager was trying to create a brand-new “This Is” playlist for one of his artists. For more context, this artist already has over 250,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, plus around two hours worth of original catalog uploaded to the platform.
Spotify ultimately declined the request, and their reasoning was characteristically vague: “To qualify for a This Is playlist, artists should be established, with a rich back catalog of music.”
To me, the artist in question definitely seems “established” and “catalog-rich” enough to warrant a “This Is” playlist. In fact, I found several other artists who are much less “established” in terms of followership who were already given this special treatment (e.g. King Saha, who has only around 2,000 monthly listeners; Vadim Kiselev, with ~800 monthly listeners; and Kilimanjaro, with <100 monthly listeners).
Several artists also have their own “This Is” playlists despite having released literally the opposite of a “rich back catalog” — e.g. see the playlists for Mac Ayres (16 songs, 59 minutes), Lil Nas X (19 songs, 48 minutes), Rich Brian (15 songs, 44 minutes), King Princess (12 songs, 37 minutes) and Tierra Whack (15 songs, 32 minutes).
Importantly, this unnamed artist above isn’t the only one who arguably deserves “This Is” treatment but is left behind for unknown reasons. Artists on the rise such as Maggie Rogers, Kari Faux and Kamasi Washington still don’t have their own “This Is” playlists, even though they are all fairly established (at least six-figure followership) and have released at least one hour worth of catalog on Spotify. (Rogers in particular has had to resort to making her own “This Is” playlist through her own account, titled “Maggie Rogers Complete Collection.”)
Who gets a hand-curated “This Is” playlist?
Once you qualify for a “This Is” playlist as an artist, you will fall under one of two categories: either algorithmically-curated, or hand-curated by a member of Spotify’s editorial staff.
Algorithmically-curated
There are three primary, clear signals that indicate a “This Is” playlist is algorithmically generated:
- Caption: The caption of an algorithmic “This Is” playlist is formatted as follows: “This is [artist name]. The essential tracks, all in one playlist.” Unless an artist or label is established “enough” and has a direct relationship with Spotify’s editorial team, there is no way for said artist/label to change or customize this caption.
- Visual design: Algorithmic “This Is” playlists also have algorithmically generated cover art — consisting of the album covers of the top four songs in the playlist, fanned out in a carousel-type format.
- Update cadence: Algorithmic “This Is” playlists are updated daily, at around 11am ET, to reflect current listener preferences. In this vein, algorithmic “This Is” playlists serve essentially as a data-driven Spotify chart for a particular artist’s discography, incorporating which songs are most streamed, most saved, most shared, least skipped and so on.
As an example, below is a screenshot, taken at 11:23am ET on June 21, 2019 of Thundercat’s algorithmically generated “This Is” playlist. You can tell it’s algorithmic because of the formulaic caption and carousel-style cover art, as well as the fact that all the songs were “updated” just half an hour prior to this screenshot being taken, even though most of the songs themselves are now a few years old.
Hand-curated
You can also spot hand-curated, editorial “This Is” playlists based on the same three criteria outlined above:
- Caption: The majority of captions for editorial “This Is” playlists are customized to reflect the artist’s biography, personality, lyrics and/or other factors. Some examples:
- BTS’ caption makes a direct reference to the group’s fanbase: “AKA Bangtan Sonyeondan, their A.R.M.Y. is unbeatable.”
- Fleetwood Mac’s caption is a simple lyric reference: “Loving them is the right thing to do.”
- Tame Impala’s descriptive caption encapsulates the artist’s personality, soundscape and trajectory: “A kaleidoscopic journey from Kevin Parker’s bedroom to the world stage – these are the majestic sounds of Tame Impala.”
- Cover art: The cover art for editorial “This Is” playlists is hand-picked by the artist or label in question and features the artist’s face front and center, instead of the automatically laid-out carousel of albums we saw above. Like the caption, this aspect of the playlist can be changed in tandem with a new release or visual rebrand, but is handled manually through Spotify’s staff.
- Update cadence: Because editorial “This Is” playlists are handled manually, they are virtually never updated daily. Rather, they tend to evolve more slowly in tandem with an artist’s album or single rollout campaigns, tour dates and other key events and reference points, which often means weeks, months or even years worth of lag time between one update and the next. This also means that editorial “This Is” playlists are a subjective statement from the artist or label about which tracks are the most “important” or significant at the moment, rather than an objective chart of platform-wide consumption that their algorithmic counterparts represent.
To give a classic example of an editorial “This Is” playlist: Fleetwood Mac’s playlist features a front-facing photo of the band on its cover art, a customized caption and a track listing that was last updated in September 2017.
There are a few intriguing exceptions to the caption criteria above. The “This Is” playlists for Lizzo, Loyle Carner, Flying Lotus and Jordan Rakei all have editorial cover art — i.e. a singular photo of each of those artists — but also a generic caption and a daily, algorithmic curation scheme.
From a marketing standpoint, customizable, editorial “This Is” playlists are much better for artists and labels, because they can use those playlists as resources to highlight new releases, anniversaries, cultural moments or anything else significant that might be happening with a particular track, instead of having to resort to Spotify’s own algorithms.
Particularly around new releases, these types of playlists actually impact consumption significantly. One label source tells me that when artists post their “This Is” playlists on social media to market a new release or related “moment” in their careers, the artist sees “anywhere from 10% to upwards of 30% lift on catalog streams, because the user is likely to listen to more than just the new song from within these lists.”
Unclear standards for hand-curated vs. algorithmic “This Is” playlists: Key themes
The confusion around who qualifies for a “This Is” playlist in the first place is only further surpassed by the inconsistencies around who qualifies for bespoke editorial support, versus being relegated to algorithmic maintenance. For instance, why do the “This Is” playlists for Chance the Rapper and Toro Y Moi get bespoke editorial support, but not those for equally if not more prominent artists like JAY Z and Mitski?
I get that the sheer number of artists who might “deserve” special treatment in the “This Is” franchise far outweighs the number of staff members at Spotify who are available to take care of all requests — let alone manually curate them — in addition to the hundreds of other editorial playlists demanding attention on the platform. Nonetheless, some inconsistencies in this category seem surprising and easily fixed, as I outline below:
Several legacy artists are left out — and hip-hop might be the most behind
One hypothesis I have is that there is a significant genre bias at work here, with legacy rock acts receiving much more editorial support than legacy rappers in the “This Is” franchise.
For instance: all of Fleetwood Mac, The Cure, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, Aerosmith, The Clash, Green Day, Eagles and Good Charlotte have editorial playlist support — but none of Snoop Dogg, The Notorious B.I.G., 2Pac, Common, Kid Cudi, T.I. or Ghostface Killah get the same treatment. Jazz also falls surprisingly behind, with artists like Nat King Cole, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Chet Baker getting only algorithmic rather than editorial “This Is” support.
The majority of Spotify’s RISE artists are neglected
Spotify has been running its RISE artist development program for a few years now, working with a curated selection of artists to help grow their careers through on-platform multimedia video/audio promotion, off-platform live events and other resources.
Jorja Smith is the only Spotify RISE artist with editorial support on her “This Is” playlist. In contrast, the “This Is” playlists for fellow RISE artists Joji, Kim Petras, Russell Dickerson, King Princess and Trippie Redd are still algorithmic rather than editorial, implying that Spotify did not do a comprehensive revamp of their on-platform presence as part of the artist-development campaign.
Current RISE group LANCO doesn’t even have their own “This Is” playlist yet, despite certainly having a critical mass of catalog; they do have a RISE-branded playlist instead, which takes the place of where a “This Is” playlist would go in Spotify’s search function, although that playlist hasn’t yet been updated to reflect their latest releases.
“This Is” playlists are out of sync with Spotify’s multimedia assets
One trend I’ve noticed across the board on Spotify is that major artists with direct-to-platform video and podcast appearances aren’t getting the same level of attention for their “This Is” playlists.
For instance, Spotify recently released a mini-documentary about ScHoolboy Q as part of RapCaviar — but the rapper still has a base-level, algorithmic “This Is” playlist, not an editorial one that can at least highlight and extend Q’s biographical story the way Anderson .Paak’s does.
Similarly, there is an entire season of Spotify’s original podcast Dissect dedicated to analyzing Tyler, The Creator’s album IGOR — yet Tyler’s “This Is” playlist is still automated rather than hand-curated, a serious missed opportunity to market the album in a more controlled and directed way on behalf of the artist.
Both Ice Cube and Talib Kweli were guests on Jemele Hill’s exclusive Spotify podcast Jemele Hill is Unbothered, but neither rapper has hand-curated “This Is” playlists either, despite their undeniable influence and stature.
Finally, Spotify’s Instagram account recently posted an IGTV video of Tyga taste-testing a variety of classic BBQ foods; meanwhile, the rapper’s “This Is” playlist is still algorithmic.
My point of bringing up all of these examples is that they each demonstrate a significant missed opportunity on Spotify’s part to leverage “This Is” playlists — which are so important that they show up as literally the number two result for artist-level search — to help direct users to videos, podcasts and other non-musical assets, on which Spotify will increasingly rely to grow their margins.
The missed opportunities certainly travel in the other direction, too. Aside from the Tyler, The Creator example above, editorial “This Is” playlists could also play a role in marketing tours and other off-platform events, in addition to off-platform releases. For instance, Fleetwood Mac is currently embarking on an international tour — I just saw them in London earlier this month — and could use their “This Is” playlist to highlight setlist decisions and/or release anniversaries to drive more streams in addition to ticket sales, but they still haven’t updated their playlist for nearly two years.
How much control do artists really have over their marketing on streaming services?
At large, Spotify exerts a significant amount of technical control over curation and tastemaking. Unlike in 2017, we’re no longer hearing execs deflecting claims that Spotify is a gatekeeper, because the company is gatekeeping more than ever, Netflix-style.
That said, Spotify is still working on building scalable, self-serve software for artists — and, eventually, podcasters — to customize their presence on the platform on a more granular level. The company has an internal product team called “Creator Identity” that’s responsible for products such as Artist’s Pick, Canvas (which allows select artists to upload eight-second videos along with their tracks to be looped in the “Now Playing” view, like GIFs), the new, stories-like Storyline feature and smaller tweaks that allow artists to add assets like custom bios, social links and up to 125 of their own photos to their Spotify profiles.
Given that “This Is” playlists are both intimately tied to an artist’s identity and given prominent real estate on Spotify’s platform, I don’t see any reason why those playlists shouldn’t become a central aspect of the Creator Identity product roadmap and artist toolkit. More importantly, these playlists should be fully customizable for any qualifying artists with respect to their captions, cover art and track order, rather than making such editorial capabilities available only for a select, arbitrary few.
Independent electronic/hip-hop producer Birocratic recently addressed this issue in a tongue-in-cheek way by creating his own playlist “No, THIS is Birocratic” as a response to Spotify’s official version. He posted the two playlists side-by-side on Twitter in May 2019 with the caption “you gotta fight for your individuality, folks”; the parody version now has nearly 18 times more followers as the original one.