The latest hit ‘Please Please Please’ by 25-year-old American singer-songwriter Sabrina Carpenter, released on June 6, surpassed her recent single ‘Espresso,’ which dropped on April 11, on the Billboard Hot 100. Isn’t that sweet? I guess so!
Although Carpenter has been producing hit songs for quite some time, some social media users are now finding her music a bit grating, especially since she has been “dominating the Spotify algorithms.”
In a now-deleted tweet, a user on X (formerly known as Twitter) tweeted: “Like this if Spotify automatically plays her music for you too I’m trying to see something.”
The tweet initially received over 87K likes and 3K quotes.
Some replies shared the same experience with Carpenter’s songs playing randomly on their Spotify and YouTube playlists.
It's also hapenning for me on YouTube playlists with "Please Please Please". My husband justo told me, you really love that song, you put it in every playlist, but it's actually just the algorythm.
— Babu Bacano 👶🏽 (@RoCoZahf) June 15, 2024
I literally was just talking about this at work today! It popped up in my personalized playlist! Mind you this is the playlist pic.twitter.com/jmakBPlvGa
— Boo 💋✨ (@sunfire5632) June 15, 2024
Ngl, I like Sabrina’s music and I like the song but it’s annoying when I go from listening to something like afrobeats or r&b and then this comes on right after like huh???
— chile… (@ButterfliChile) June 17, 2024
My husband was listening to a podcast in the car and it played please, then espresso back to back when it was over instead of the next podcast episode.
— didntletmesignin (@didntletmesigni) June 15, 2024
Spotify @Spotify y’all need to calm down with those 2 Sabrina Carpenter songs
I was listening to an Afrobeats playlist and here comes Expresso
Wtf ?— Mr S🤦🏾♂️ (@MusicLoverNiMa) June 16, 2024
Another user responded, “Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso has single-handedly destroyed my Spotify algorithm.”
“Sabrina carpenter makes algorithm music doesn’t that bother anyone doesn’t it bore u at least 😫” one other user shared.
On Spotify’s website, it is stated, “When you reach the end of an album, playlist, or selection of songs, Spotify automatically plays similar songs so the music never stops.”
Also added is their Discovery Mode, which aims to personalize your playlist by analyzing similar artists and labels that the listener streams, and adds them to the algorithms. However, it is not guaranteed.
A Cultural Economy and music business expert professor, Dr. Chris Anderton, commented on this and suggested that there could be a financial aspect that boosts the prominence of “Espresso” on almost everyone’s Spotify. Dr. Anderton mentioned that Spotify modified its autoplay to let you listen to artists based on ‘recommendations’ and not the playlist history. Moreover, Carpenter is signed under Universal Music which technically has shares in Spotify, hence Spotify will play songs from record labels to enforce growth to their data.
Could this be a worldwide coincidence, or was there someone or something truly behind all of this? As of this writing, Spotify and Carpenter’s team haven’t released any statement.
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