Spotify Begins Offering 'Top 50' Song Lists

(MHBC Radio & Media News)) -- Music streaming service Spotify will begin publishing lists of its top 50 most-streamed songs and most-shared songs, embedded with links that allow fans to listen without registering or signing into the service. "The move is part of Spotify's efforts to broaden its user base, which totals 24 million active members world-wide and only 6 million paid subscribers," reports The Wall Street Journal. Pandora has some 70 million active users and more than 200 million registered users, relying more on advertising than paid subscriptions for its revenue. The charts will be called the "Spotify 50" (the most-streamed songs) and the "Social 50" (the most-shared songs). In addition to being available on Spotify’s own site, the two new charts will be offered as widgets which other website can embed. "Those widgets will basically be mini Spotify music players, with each of the fifty tracks available to listen to without having to register first," reports SlashGear. Users will be able to click to stream tracks on the charts and review charts from past weeks. The lists will update automatically each Monday at approximately 12noon ET. "Data is our secret sauce," says Ken Parks, who heads Spotify's U.S. operations. Parks says the information the company has amassed about its users listening habits, as well as how music gets shared through social media, has helped it discover a number of potentially big acts it hopes to help break in the near future, moving in on what was once record-label territory. Spotify will also begin releasing play-count data -- the total number of global plays of a track since October 2008, allowing artists to track how their music is performing. The streaming service also is launching a web-based music player. Previously, users had to download the Spotify application to their computers or mobile devices and open the app in order to stream tunes, "a process that has frustrated some users," as WSJ puts it. UPDATE: Based on our own early testing, we are disputing one (major) point reported by WSJ and SlashGear -- that the widgets "allow fans to listen without registering or signing into the service." Our test of the player, embedded below, resulted in an inability to hear a song without first signing up for Spotify. We clicked on Justin Timberlake's "Mirrors" and a new window was opened with a separate song-specific player. But when we clicked the play button, the window abruptly segued to a new one that insisted we either sign-up or sign-in. Whether this snafu is temporary or permanent remains to be seen. (Our own TotalPopularMusic.com weekly "Super Sixty" and "Daily Dozen" charts have clickable links to immediately listen to all songs listed via their respective music videos which open full screen in a new window that is ready to play.)