topic Re: Bowie/Under pressure in Content Questions

Bowie/Under pressure

saprwh — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 11:12:45 GMT

Why isn't Under Pressure in the list of Bowie's most popular tracks?

Re: Bowie/Under pressure

wheredcolego — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 14:01:27 GMT

Under Pressure was a Queen/Bowie collaboration. Spotify appears to tie it to Queen's catalog instead of Bowie's, probably because it was never on a Bowie album - it was released as a single in 1981, then Queen put it on Hot Space the following year.

Re: Bowie/Under pressure

saprwh — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 14:07:11 GMT

I don't think the fact it wasn't on an original Bowie studio album (it's on a 'Best of Bowie' album by the way) should prevent it from being attached to Bowie's catalogue. And des that happen in any other case of a collaboration on Spotify?

Re: Bowie/Under pressure

wheredcolego — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 15:05:14 GMT

Good point, although I wasn't necessarily suggesting that it shouldn't be tied to his catalogue as much as I was guessing as to why Spotify wasn't tying it to his catalogue.

However, now that I think about it a little more, I have a new theory that makes a lot more sense:

The list of "Popular" tracks for any given artist is generated based those with the highest play counts.
It IS tied to Bowie's catalogue (several different versions, in fact - the one on Best of Bowie and a handful of live versions).
It's also tied to Queen's catalogue. Even though they're the same recording, The Hot Space version and the Best of Bowie versions are treated as separate tracks.
The "Top Result" when searching "Under Pressure" returns the version from Hot Space, which leads to more clicks on Queen's version, which leads to it being listed in Queen's top 5 "popular" tracks.
To get to the Best of Bowie version, it takes a few more clicks, so its play count is significantly lower.
10 other Bowie songs are played more often than this more-difficult-to-find version of "Under Pressure".

I gotta say... this isn't the rabbit hole I thought I'd end up at the bottom of this morning, but I'm OK with it. 😄

Re: Bowie/Under pressure

saprwh — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 15:17:11 GMT

Well, I'm glad you went down that rabbit hole as that is probably it - well thought out!
It's a shame that Spotify don't have a way of integrating click numbers for the very same song/recording...
Thanks