“No.” The difference is especially stark, he adds, if you’re not near the top of the playlist. “Does Today’s Top Hits move the needle as much now as it did four years ago?” one senior label executive asks.

“Now you’re looking at more like 15,000 to 20,000 streams a week.” “There used to be a world where an unknown artist would get the cover of the Fresh Finds playlist and they would get between 60,000 and 100,000 streams a week,” says one manager who works primarily with developing acts. In a statement to Billboard, Sulinna Ong, global head of editorial at Spotify, countered that the platform’s “top five editorial playlists are followed by more than 80 million listeners - they’re wildly popular.” She added that the overall audience for playlists is larger than ever, “these listeners have increasingly diverse tastes, Spotify is meeting that consumer demand, and, as a result, more artists are being discovered.” A representative for Apple Music declined to comment for this story.īut managers sound nearly misty-eyed when they reminisce about the streams that some editorial playlists once generated. “The major streaming platforms are reacting to culture now rather than driving it,” adds Tatiana Cirisano, music industry analyst and consultant for MIDiA Research. “The Spotify and Apple editorial playlists don’t have as much punch” as they did, agrees Kieron Donoghue, founder of Humble Angel Records and former vp of global playlists strategy at Warner Music Group. “Or even Pop Rising - it was like, ‘If a song got on Pop Rising, it’s going to get to Today’s Top Hits and do 5 million streams a week.’ ”īut in 2022, the manager continues, “it doesn’t feel like that’s the case.” This realization is growing around the music industry.

“Today’s Top Hits used to be the holy grail,” says one manager of several major-label acts. Not long ago, a placement on Spotify’s RapCaviar or Apple Music’s Today’s Hits playlists could ignite a single’s streaming numbers overnight.

Spotify tracks