"It’s a catalyst for unhealthy comparisons": Russ slams Spotify’s monthly listener count on X

The American rapper and singer, Russ, slammed Spotify's monthly listener count in his recent tweets on X. The thirty-two-year-old has been active in the music industry since 2007 and is known for his famous songs, 3:15, Losin Control, and What They Want.

In a series of tweets uploaded on April 30, Russ criticized Spotify's monthly listener counts, which are publicly displayed on the artists' profiles on Spotify. As per Russ's statement,

"It’s a catalyst for unhealthy comparisons. It creates misleading metrics like "monthly listeners” and incentivizes people to cheat so they can inflate the perception of popularity."

According to the rapper,

"Hiding the numbers would reduce the pressure to compete on inauthentic metrics and encourage a focus on the music itself. Look at Apple Music…there are 0 (zero) convos about how music is performing on there or if streams are fake…because you don’t know!! lmao as it should be"

As per the singer, the music stats should be kept private between the artist and their team, rather than being shown to everyone. The singer further acknowledged that public numbers might be helping Spotify get more users and attention.

Russ clarifies the meaning of monthly listeners to fans

Russ' X post talking against the Spotify monthly listener count soon attracted the users' reactions. While Russ received support from several X users who appreciated him for speaking up about the issue, others disagreed, pointing out that similar metrics are publicly available for movies and athletes without being a problem.

The singer further clarified the meaning behind the term monthly listener and why he is against it by adding,

"monthly listeners is essentially monthly impressions it’s not “how many people listen to you and are fans” someone coulda had a playlist on shuffle and your song came on and then they skip it. they would be counted as a monthly listener stop using that metric to try to decipher how many fans people have. it’s literally just impressions lol"

Russ further added a reply in the same post that said,

"30sec is how long a song has to play for it to be counted meaning if you have a playlist on shuffle and you skip a song after 30 seconds, you’re technically a listener of that artist lol even though you didn’t seek their music out nor did you even keep listening after 30 seconds"

A budding singer, @NHWLF, replied, thanking Russ for the explanation.

"as someone with under 100 monthlies and still going i appreciate you for this post."

Another user, @d_suelo, added by writing,

"Listening to a song for a minimum of 30 secs twice within 30 days equals a monthly listener. It's a dumb statistic."

The internet quickly became divided on the topic, with some agreeing with Russ' perspective while others defended Spotify’s metrics.

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Spotify first introduced the Fan Insights feature in November 2015, allowing artists to see data on monthly listeners, locations, and music preferences. It was later changed to Spotify for Artists, offering features like profile verification, artist support, customizable pages, and song promotion.

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