Spotify chief executive Daniel Ek shared a number of data points today about his music streaming service during his keynote at the South by Southwest conference in Austin. One that caught my attention was the fact that 30 percent of the playlists built on Spotify replicate the track list of existing full-length albums.
In other words, when users are given the freedom to create whatever playlist they want, a sizable number are choosing to just listen to albums. Again, we’re talking about a minority (and these numbers don’t include legal users in the United States, since Spotify hasn’t launched here yet), but this suggests that contrary to what some have argued, digital music distribution won’t completely kill the album as a format that people use to listen to music.
“I don’t agree [with people who think the album is dead],” he said. “I think maybe the pricing needs to be adjusted, there are lot of things that we need to do. But when I see those kind of stats, I think the concept of an album is definitely there. I’m intrigued to listen to it, and it seems most of our users are as well.”
