Spotify: How is a track's popularity value determined?
I've been working with the spotify meta data api, and I was trying to figure out exactly what the popularity field of a track meant (represented as a float, 1 being popular, 0 not). I checked if there was a linear correlation between the float value and total plays as listed in spotify, but there definitely is not. I found three tracks by the same artist whose popularity values were all 0.61, one had 1.7 million plays, one had 1.6 million and another had ~140,000. Unfortunately playcounts are not part of their meta data api.
Does anybody know how they determine this value for each track? I'm guessing it might be a relative fraction of (plays/time on spotify) compared to the track with the most plays/time but I can't prove that. If you know I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks
Answer
Spotify's popularity is indeed based on the number of streams, but instead of total plays, it's based on a short timeframe. This is why you'll often see a more popular number on #1 on an artist profile that has less plays than the #2.
We have used the API number as a percentage in our [Stream Popularity][1], giving people insight in the current popularity of their track. So keep in mind this is a number the can increase, but just as easily decrease.
Good luck!
Note:
link above has been removed because it was pointing to a phishing website. For reference here is a link from webarchive
https://web.archive.org/web/20141009072315/http://www.streampopularity.com/