[nicgrev103]

I suspected this practice and ran a very rudimentary test which concluded they were not doing such things. I made a playlist with Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Justin Bieber and then an equal amount of songs from obscure artists with fewer than 1000 followers (this was back when followers was the main popularity metric, now it's monthly streams). I then played the playlist on shuffle, expecting for the 'popular'/ expensive artists to be played less. I tallied each song for a day of listening (that's as much as I could take!) and the popular songs were played equally as frequently and the non- popular. Like I said, very rudimentary but didn't yield the result I was expecting.

[alwaysbeconsing]

I believe statement is about the playlist Spotify makes, not those made by user. Those called "Daily Mix", generated on user listening choices.

[Triphibian]

Yes, these are the suggested playlists. As well as the popular pre-fab playlists. A notable one mentioned was their "Ambient" playlist -- which favors in house ambient artists with much less generous royalty deals than someone like Brian Eno -- who is be the best known artist in the field apart from maybe Aphex Twin -- but easily replaceable with a no-name for some people apparenty.