Spotify Records a Spike of Listeners for Tunes Perfect for Home-Based Activities
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cast its shadows upon us, a large percentage of the society is left scouring for productive activities highly workable at home. These range from cleaning one’s home, gardening, and cooking to painting, reading, and even taking online courses.
And in the midst of each pursuit lies music that keeps people company, which was then manifested in the music platform Spotify.
As per the data that it has drawn between April 17 to May 17, 2020, listeners are soundtracking activities that encompass gardening, homeschooling, painting, and dyeing their hair.
And lest we forget cleaning, which showed more than 40% increase in listeners around the world creating playlists to enthusiastically clean their homes to, with TLC’s “No Scrubs” being the popular song choice in these playlists.
Also read: How to Sanitize Your Grocery Items At Home
For Filipinos in particular, popular song additions to cleaning-themed playlists include “Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift, “Party in the U.S.A.” by Miley Cyrus, “thank u, next” by Ariana Grande, “IDGAF” by Dua Lipa, and “Shut Up and Dance” by WALK THE MOON.
Listeners are highly likely to be in search of learning new craft skills too, as indicated by the 125% increase in the streaming of the podcast “Just Wanna Quilt”, and by the more than 60% increase in the podcast “WeCrochet”.
For the record, here’s a round-up of the new social distancing trends observed by Spotify:
Hair gone wild
Spotify has seen about a 50% increase in the creation of playlists to inspire people while dealing with hair maintenance. It was deemed so by looking at the keywords in playlist titles that include “haircut”, “dyeing hair”, and “hair dye.”
Some popular song additions to all these hair-themed playlists are as follows: “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne, “Sugar, We’re Goin Down” by Fall Out Boy, “The Middle” By Jimmy Eat World, “High Hopes” by Panic! At The Disco, “Stressed Out” by Twenty One Pilots, and “Hair Cutter” by Animal Collective.
Homeschool hysteria
It seems parents and students are turning to music to get through the challenges of homeschooling because there was more than 1,000% increase in the creation of homeschool-themed playlists.
Popular tracks added to these playlists include “Supalonely” by BENEE and Gus Dapperton, “Sucker” by Jonas Brothers, “Circles” by Post Malone, and “Don’t Start Now” by Dua Lipa.
It’s not all work and no play, though; as Spotify has seen a more than 1000% jump in playlists being created around Nintendo’s popular Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a family-friendly life simulation video game that’s providing an escape.
People are exploring their creativity
While it was observed that there was an increase of about 40% in the global creation of coloring-themed playlists, there was a more than 90% increase in the creation of painting-themed playlists. And Ed Sheeran’s “Shape Of You” is a popular song pick in these.
Working from home is better with music
The most added track to the working-from-home-themed playlists, which has seen a more than 1,400% increase in playlist-creation, is “Work From Home” by Fifth Harmony (feat. Ty Dolla $ign). Other popular songs added to these playlists include “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton, “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd, “Light On” by Maggie Rogers, “10,000 hours” by Dan + Shay (with Justin Bieber), “Boss Bitch” by Doja Cat, “Delicate” by Taylor Swift and “The Less I Know the Better” by Tame Impala.
Sonatas from Beethoven and Bach are also popular additions, with pianist Lang Lang’s version of “Für Elise” as a top classical pick.
Baking is the new “Ommmm…”
In terms of baking-themed playlists that have shown a 120% increase creation-wise, the popular songs added include “Sunday Best” by Surfaces, “Banana Pancakes” by Jack Johnson, “Watermelon Sugar” by Harry Styles, “Sugar” by Maroon 5, and “everything I wanted” by Billie Eilish.
Listeners created approximately 225% more banana bread-themed playlists between April 17 and May 17 too. There are now more than 2,750 banana bread playlists on Spotify.
People are channeling their inner plantitos and plantitas
An increase of more than 430% was recorded in terms of the creation of gardening-themed playlists on Spotify. Popular song picks in these playlists include“Gardening At Night” by R.E.M, “Avant Gardener” by Courtney Barnett, “Mr. Blue Sky” by Electric Light Orchestra, and “Sunflower” by Post Malone and Swae Lee.
Podcasts are providing inspiration too, with the most popular gardening-themed podcasts on Spotify over the past month being “The Joe Gardener Show”, “Epic Gardening: Daily Growing Tips and Advice”, and “The RHS Gardening Podcast”.
Listeners have been busy cleaning
Spotify has seen about a 30% increase in streaming of its popular “Cleaning Kit” playlist, about a 40% increase in cleaning-themed playlists being created, and a more than 65% increase in the streaming of those playlists in the past month. Users have particularly created more than 940,000 cleaning playlists.
Popular song choices include “Uptown Funk” by Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson, “No Scrubs” by TLC, “Roar” by Katy Perry, “Toxic” by Britney Spears, “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers, and “Work” by Drake and Rihanna.
People are trying to recreate those summer vibes
As the weather warms up in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, listeners are investing time in creating a soundtrack with the right summer vibes—thus recording an increase of about 245% in summer-themed playlists being created globally.
Also read: Spotify Launches New and Lighter Music Streaming App for Android Devices
This is a press release. Edits were made prior to publishing.
Featured image and the first photo in the article are courtesy of Spotify.
