Music

Spotify’s ‘Top Fan’ Feature Is Delighting And Confusing Music Fans Everywhere

Hands up if you're somehow also a top fan of the Glee Cast soundtrack?

by Joseph Earp  27 February 2020
Spotify Top Fans meme

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You might have noticed that Spotify has unveiled its new Top Fans feature, on account of the fact that literally everybody has been posting about it on the internet this week.

The feature is simple. If you stream enough of a band to hit the top three percent of their most committed listeners, you’ll get a little push telling you that you’re the Top Fan of that band. As YourEDM notes, it’s similar to Facebook’s Top Fan feature, which was designed to reward those who regularly interacted with posts from a particular page.

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From there, there’s not actually a lot to the feature. It offers you an “endless” playlist of the band’s music, sure, but the real kicker is the bragging rights. You get to tell the internet that you have committed more hours of your life than most people on the planet to one particular musician. It’s a tribal thing; an opportunity to show off your alliance with a certain sound and scene.

Of course, because becoming a Top Fan for a particular band is worked out via a percentage of total listeners, you’re more likely to become a Top Fan for less popular bands. All of you that have Top Fan badges for international best sellers like Lizzo or Queen — you’re the real heavy hitters.

I’m genuinely not making fun of the impulse to share that honour, by the way, because a few days ago I posted this, perhaps the greatest achievement of my life to date:

I’m not alone in having some obscure, weirdo artist as my most-listened to either. I mean, just look at user @emscrazynotions’ badge:

Anyway, because this is the internet, the feature quickly became a meme.

Of course, there are also swathes of the population who are so exploratory in their music taste that they didn’t get a Top Fans badge at all. And lemme tell you: they’re pissed about it.

Just goes to show: it really does help to get obsessive, and Spotify knows it.