Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

by Derek Thompson

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

At the end of our interview, Ogle and I talked about how most music fans (but not all) are fundamentally conservative. They like what they like, and they don’t want to be too challenged by music. “The line from psychologists is, if you’ve seen it before, it hasn’t killed you yet,” I joked. Ogle’s face lit up. “I have a story for you,” he said. The original version of Discover Weekly was supposed to include only songs that users had never heard before. But in its first internal test at Spotify, a bug in the algorithm let through songs that users already knew. “Everyone reported it as a bug, and we fixed it so that every single song was totally new,” he said. But after his team fixed the bug, something unusual happened: Engagement with the playlist fell. “It turns out having a bit of familiarity bred trust, especially for first-time users. If we make a new playlist for you and there’s not a single thing for you to hook onto or recognize, to go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a good call!’ it’s completely intimidating and people don’t engage.” The original bug was actually an essential feature. Discover Weekly was a more appealing product when it had even one familiar band or song. “I think users wanted to trust the feature, but they were waiting to see some sign that it knew them, too,” Ogle said. Spotify users wanted a fresh taste. But they also wanted to make sure it wouldn’t kill them.