Spotify block overplayed songs

Spotify does this annoying thing where it determines you like a song, and then it shows you that song every day for the rest of your life. I’m all for playing the hits, but discovering new music is not bad. Spotify seems poorly designed for that use case. Yes, they have a great team and are juggling discovery with retention and a million other factors, but I’m allowed to complain, so complain I will.

Anyways, this got me thinking about how songs get ingested into the popular zeitgeist and then are played everywhere incessantly. Recently, this happened with Chappell Roan. Their music is great, it’s a nice callback to the 80s with a modern twist. That said, I don’t need to hear it every time I go to any store.

This got me thinking, what if Spotify could detect when a song is “too hot” and then block it temporarily for the entire planet? Yes, this is completely counter to their business model and cripples artists arbitrarily, but it’d also be a good way to spread public attention and interest around to other artists. It’s too extreme and people would just churn to YouTube or Apple Music, but the idea is interesting.

As a heads up, I am going on vacation (finally) for a week and a half, which means no ideas. I am very tired and excited to be offline.

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