Spotify removes listener count from Discovered On section

When you visit the About tab for any artist on Spotify, you can see a list of playlists that have brought listeners to this artist. Beneath the name of each playlist are numerical figures indicating just how many listeners found the artist through each playlist.

For example, the Spotify artist page for Canadian indie rock musician Destroyer shows that 14,124 listeners discovered his music via the “Ultimate Indie Presents… Best Indie Tracks of the 2010s” playlist. 11,973 listeners heard him through “All New Indie”.

Destroyer’s Discovered On section

However, in baffling news, listener numbers have been removed from the Discovered On section in Spotify’s desktop app with the latest update for Mac OS. The issue was first raised by Spotify Community poster CzechFencer. They’d noticed the disappearance of listener numbers after updating to a newer version of macOS Catalina.

Discovered On, with listener numbers removed

You can still see an artist’s total monthly listeners in the banner sectoin of their artist profile. (For example, Destroyer’s page says “Montly Listeners 554,975). But Spotify Community moderator Ivan has revealed that listener count under Discovered On will now only be available to artists and won’t be shared publicly. We assume this means it’ll be disappearing from all other future updates of the Spotify app.

Suffice to say, users were not pleased with the update. “this is awful,” wrote Community member teejus. “You’re destroying opportunities for artists to get heard. **bleep** you spotify,” said Cuben. Wolfie12 was even more unimpressed: “Why the **bleep** would Spotify do this? How does this improve the user experience? This was a cool feature and deleting is taking a HUGE STEP BACKWARDS.”

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.