In the days of physical records, you could simply shrug and claim to have known a band before they were big. But with digital streaming comes cold, hard evidence of when you first listened to a band — and Spotify now lets you use it to work out if your bragging is accurate.
The new ‘Found Them First‘ microsite asks for access to your account, then scours it for what you listened to and when. It looks at the first time you listened to an artist, compares it against the rest of Spotify’s uses-base, then judges how successful the acts have become based on plays and growth rate (20 million streams and growth of 2000 percent between January 2013 and June 2015 count as success at the moment).
According to the tool, I found six acts, including Wild Cub, Goldroom, RAC and Run The Jewels. It also claimed, however, that I’d listened to Mark Ronson before 98 percent of all Spotify users, but I’m pretty sure he was already a relatively big name by January 2013, so the tool might not be quite perfect.
Still, it’s a bit of fun, and at the end of the exercise Spotify offers you a list of hot new acts that it thinks you should be listening to. Maybe next time you might do better?