This story starts with another story, one about Stephen Malkmus, the lead singer and guitarist of the alternative rock band Pavement. A couple years ago, he was in a bakery and heard a song called “Harness Your Hopes,” by Pavement, and did not recognize it.

He could not tell that it was his voice coming through the speakers at the bakery, he could not tell it was his band that was playing along with it. “Harness Your Hopes” was a B-side, recorded for Pavement’s album Brighten the Corners, released in 1997.

It was released on an EP in 1999, but the song was relatively unknown, except to the true Pavementheads, until 2008, when it was released on an extended version of Brighten the Corners. Now, the song is one of Pavement’s most well-known, becoming somewhat of an alt-rock anthem for Gen-Zers striving to return to the 90s.

But, it was not that rerelease that brought “Harness Your Hope” to the forefront of the “Wrong Generation” crowd, it was something in Spotify’s algorithm, something that caused it to increase so much in prominence.

Currently, “Harness Your Hopes” sits at the top of Pavement’s most played songs on Spotify, 12 million plays above “Cut Your Hair,” a bona fide hit for Pavement in 1994.

What caused this resurgence? The answer is fairly simple, it sounds like other songs. That may be dumbing it down a bit, but it is at the essence of why “Harness Your Hopes,” a relatively forgotten B-side has risen to the heights that it has.

The reason this helps the song is because of Spotify’s autoplay function, where if you leave a playlist or song or album on after it is finished, Spotify’s algorithm will begin playing your songs that sound like the one that you just listened to.

I personally heard “Harness Your Hopes” for the first time after listening to the Replacements’ “Can’t Hardly Wait.” Spotify’s autoplay function is widely lauded, it helps the listener discover music, it helps lesser-known artists be found, and sometimes, it blows up a song that was widely forgotten not even 5 years before.

Spotify’s autoplay function was released in 2017, “Harness Your Hopes” was nowhere to be seen on Pavement’s Top 5 until then, let alone 12 million plays ahead of the number 2 slot.

Because the song sounds like other alt-rock songs, many people were seeing it pop up in their autoplay, and then listening to it more and more (which is fair, because the song is pretty catchy).

For the listener, this revelation does not mean too much at first glance, Spotify’s showing me songs that I may like, and I do like them, so all is well, right? This seems like a slam-dunk positive for all involved, but it really is not.

The problem with Spotify’s algorithm increasing unknown songs to the top overall listened to by an artist is that it incentivizes artists to create songs that sound like other songs. Currently, Spotify artists make anywhere from 0.006 to 0.0084 cents per play on Spotify (which is another problem, but not what this article is about), meaning that “Harness Your Hopes” has given Pavement around 200 thousand dollars, with its 34 million plays.

Obviously, Pavement did not make this song to intentionally mess with the Spotify algorithm, as it predates Spotify by 9 years, and predates the autoplay function by 20, but this phenomenon opens the door to more artists creating songs that sound like already existing songs, and diluting the listening pool so much that every song sounds the same.

If I see that I can create a song that sounds like “Can’t Hardly Wait” and get 200 thousand dollars, why wouldn’t I? It makes the algorithm far too easy to be gamed and makes the listener lose what the autoplay function what it was originally intended for, to discover new music that is reflective of what they like.

I am not accusing any artist of doing this, but I am saying that Spotify should increase the diversity of their autoplay function, I have played a couple of different alt-rock songs, and almost every single one has yielded me “Harness Your Hopes” during the autoplay function.

If Spotify wants people to discover new music, to amplify smaller artists then they should make sure their algorithm is reflecting that.

Sadly, we know literally nothing about Spotify’s algorithm, so actual data analysis cannot be done, but I turn to autoplay to discover new music, I should not be hearing the same song over and over again, although “Harness Your Hopes” is a pretty darn good song to hear over and over again.

Source for Stephen Malkmus story: https://www.stereogum.com/2105993/pavement-harness-your-hopes-spotify/columns/sounding-board/