Spotify’s fastest-growing music category is the newly named “environmental/sleep/relaxative” – in the last week alone, 282 albums from the category were added to the music streaming service’s catalogue, many times more than other genres including hard rock, latin pop and dancehall.
11.6% of all new albums on Spotify that week fell into its sleep and relaxation category, with collections including White Noise for Baby Sleep, Zen Spa, Beach Sleep Sounds and Spiritual Guitar Chillout.
Earlier in 2015, Spotify said that its users had created more than 2.8m sleep-themed playlists of their own, with Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud the most popular track among those collections.
Not surprising. I have recommended that clients aiming to boost their streaming income look into creating some ‘chill out’ tracks or albums. Streaming is especially suited for mellower moods, be it as a background for work, studying, relaxing … and, of course, sleeping. These are all activities where music is often used in the background, and playlists are repeated if found to be effective (sometimes in the same evening, in the case of a sleep soundtrack). Admittedly, it’s not necessarily exciting to create music to be used as a drowsy backdrop (unless you’re Eno, of course) but it might end up a pleasurable artistic detour that capitalizes on one of streaming’s inherent advantages.
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