Spotify's newest patented technology turns your listening data into a prediction model for emerging artists

Being an artist can get rough in the music industry, from jumping into a myriad of talents to staying relevant within the ever-changing environments. For a new artist, all things that come with breaking out into the scene can be overwhelming and scary to know if your music will reach the right ears or even enough to stay afloat.

As a music streaming giant, Spotify has created a way around this with their latest A&R technology which they have patented. According to Music Business Weekly, Spotify has created A&R technology that will predict the success levels of “relatively unknown” artists that “are likely to break” soon.

In their patent that was granted on Tuesday (March 1 2022), they have developed a “system and method for breaking artist prediction in a media content environment”. The patent works by focusing on the listening patterns from its user data and turning it into prediction logic, “the breaking artist prediction logic can thereafter predict future breaking artists based on further playback requests from an early adopter interacting with their media device via the software application.”

Any user that falls under the early adopter would not even know that they are actually Spotify’s new A&R process — machines have fully taken over our consciousness.

However, this technology isn’t anything new. Instrumental acquired by Warner Music, Meddling used by Republic Records and Interscope have been in the talent scouting game.

For record labels, this could be a gateway to adding new dynamics between artists, labels and streaming services. Through this data collection, labels are then able to sign an artist early and push marketing and promotional accordingly through these predictions.