How is calculated the "Popularity" of a track?

[SoTerelle]

I have a simple question. When I move my mouse over the "popularity bars", it says that this track has been listened to 45 895 times by example. I was just wondering, does this mean that, since the beginning of Spotify, this track has been listened to that amount of time? Or is it the amount of time this track was listened to last year? Last month? Last week? Or is it the amount of different accounts who listened to that track? Because I'm often surprised by how low the popularity of some known songs is, and on the other hand I'm often surprised to see songs I never heard of being that popular.

[Taylor · Accepted solution]

Hi, and welcome to the community!

The popularity of a track, i.e. the number of plays, is calculated from the beginning.

Anthony

[Pierre919]

This isn't a solution, this question is still unanswered.

The number of track plays does not correlate with the popularity graph. Look at the Led Zeppelin album Mothership. 'When the levee breaks' and 'Stairway to heaven' have the same number of bars on the popularity graph but Levee has been played 29 million times whereas stairway has been played 191 million times. 

The question is, what metrics are used to calculate the popularity score? e.g. is it the total number of plays that week vs the total number of lifetime plays as a percentage?