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Track 02 / 08 · 2026
Discovery Gap
Product Analysis · Music Streaming
Does streaming discovery fail smaller artists? 1.44M plays say yes, so I proposed a fix.
The story
I analysed 1.44M plays from 10 listeners' Spotify histories against Last.fm data to test whether discovery works worse for smaller artists.
It does: only 12% of lesser-known artists were still being played 30–90 days after discovery, against 19% of big artists, and all 10 listeners showed the gap.
The write-up turns that into a product proposal, "Second Listen", a feature to give a liked first listen of a smaller artist a second chance. All 10 listeners consented to their data being published.
12% vs 19% still played a month later