Spotify has discontinued its popular viral charts.
Yesterday, listeners started to notice that the viral charts for global and for specific regions around the world had disappeared. The now-discontinued viral charts were algorithmically-based which ranked the most viral songs across the world and also some specific countries, with no editorial inputs.
The charts were based on surge in popularity of the songs on their platform, based on increased streams and shares across different social media platforms but Spotify did not ever reveal the exact criteria.
Spotify will now showcase and focus on a similar chart called Viral Hits chart that could allow Spotify more control over which songs are worthy of this highlight as they will be editorial based selections.
There are currently three versions of the Viral Hits editorial charts, including a general version and region-specific ones for the UK/Ireland and Japan.
In a statement about the decision to discontinue the viral charts, a representative from Spotify said: “Spotify has retired its viral charts as part of an ongoing effort to focus on features that best reflect how listeners engage with music today. Listeners can continue to discover trending music through Spotify’s Top Charts and editorial playlists, including our ‘Viral Hits’ playlist.”
The move could be a result of numerous AI based songs making the viral charts in the past few months and some folks gaming it by using artificial streaming methods.