I use Spotify quite a lot during normal times, but now that COVID19 has me housebound I’ve noticed I’m using it even more. I took to the Irish Spotify charts to see was this a national event or just me. The below chart shows the total number of streams for each song in the top 3 of the Irish Spotify chart had week by week. The red bars indicate full weeks where the Irish nation was under lockdown restrictions.
As can be seen there does seem to be a bit of an increase. Although for the sake of robustness I would love a larger data set of individuals, alas I just don’t have access to this. The increase seems very marginal but the difference between the average total number of streams before and after the restrictions is 90,075.25 streams. Divided by the population of Ireland (roughly 4,700,000) this would mean just over an extra 52 streams per person in Ireland.
Now obviously not everyone in Ireland is a Spotify user so the number of streams per person who use Spotify is obviously a lot higher than this figure, but you get the idea! We’re listening to Spotify more. If you are interested in keeping up with more analysis of the Irish music industry, please give Music Economics a like on Facebook.
By Daragh O’Leary
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