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for Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso & Please Please Please, and various artists' singles?
June 25, 2024 Written by Emmy Katzen
Sources suggest it could spread as far as Taylor Swift (feat. Post Malone)’s Fortnight, and Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us.
Sabrina Carpenter’s 2024 summertime single, Espresso, reached Number 1 on the global Spotify chart. It had become her biggest hit single. This was in April of 2024, but there is still some gossip circling around on X and Reddit. People are saying that Espresso and Please Please Please autoplay on their Spotify, and some say it does not matter if they are fans of her music. This has brought to light other artists in mainstream music, calling into question Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar.
It’s important to add this happened to people during the Kendrick Lamar drama with Drake, and his release of a single. Kendrick’s Not Like Us would prompt when opened. This also happened to me, despite knowing almost none of his music. The last Kendrick Lamar song I listened to was the SZA collaboration, All the Stars, from 2018. So, I might not be the target audience for his latest work, nonetheless it was loaded for me to play when I opened Spotify. This was for a couple of months there.
And again, it appears to be happening with Sabrina’s latest singles. And if you have ever had a song in your head, you know how it is to need to listen to get it out of your head. Well this morning, I opened Spotify to play a song from my dream, and Please Please Please was pre-loaded to play. But I hadn’t saved it as a liked song, nor been listening to it before. This is what I am used to with Spotify, but instead songs are coming up despite this as a ‘suggested song’. It can also manifest as the autoplay feature, where a ‘suggested song’ begins to play after a chosen song. This specific thing hasn’t happened to me, but it might be because I play a lot of playlists and mixes made for me.
Now, I have to admit that I’m a fan of Sabrina Carpenter. AND her Espresso, while having never listened to Please Please Please. Aside from random short videos. When heading over to X and Reddit to read down into the rabbit hole, I see that people are noticing this too. That got me thinking.
Does this mean that these songs are industry plants, and that autoplay is a tool to inflate the play count? I went to the internet first, and then social media to do some researching.
A deep dive can be found here, written by Amy Davidson on NME, where she shares information to help explain. It appears that this is happening to the majority of listeners, if we are going off of the chatter online. The article cites Spotify explaining their autoplay feature. Dr. Chris Anderson, an Associate Professor, points out the ownership of various record labels and Spotify. This insinuates the joint interests they could have.
The Tab’s Harrison Brocklehurst did a fair investigation into the matter, as well. They tested what songs autoplay next after songs from ranges of different genres. The consensus was that when playing songs of similar type-beat, you may hear a ‘suggested song’ up next. But, when playing very dissimilar songs, the autoplay was not forcing these songs. With this evidence, it shows the success of these songs has more to do with their allure, and only partially because of autoplay.
This could be inflating the play count on a small level, but to what extent is hard to measure. Let us know what you think. Does it seem like incentives for the record labels and Spotify can explain this, as Dr. Chris Anderson was talking about? There are genuine fans of Sabrina Carpenter (and the other artists mentioned). This is why there is success of their music. Not to mention a summertime anthem like Espresso. Which I’m loving, by the way!
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