I’m listening to Irish post-punk band Fontaines D.C.’s new track ‘Starburster’. It fades out and Spotify selects popstar du jour Sabrina Carpenter’s bop ‘Espresso’. Not entirely on brand but OK. A few days later I’m obviously listening to song of the summer and Drake’s public humiliation/Kendrick’s diss track ‘Not Like Us’ when it ends and I’m served, yep, popstar du jour Sabrina Carpenter’s bop ‘Espresso’. If that sounds familiar, it’s because the audio thirst trap has been spreading out across people’s algorithms with increasing intensity, regardless of whether they’re a ‘Carpenter’ or not. Espresso’ has dethroned Taylor Swift’s track ‘Fortnight’’s position at the top of the charts to claim Number One in the UK, and at the rate oxygen is being replaced by “That’s that me, espresso” wherever you go, it’s set to become a song of the summer contender. Which raises the question… What exactly is happening behind the scenes of this delicious brew? Is there an industry plot to get ‘Espresso’ fused to our frontal lobes, or is it the natural conclusion to a shit hot marketing campaign and a talented popstar having her moment?
According to Spotify, “multiple factors” go into a track appearing as your next song. That includes everything from how popular a song is at that moment in time, to its appearance on playlists curated by both Spotify’s editorial team and normal folk, and what people with a similar taste in music to you have been listening to. So, if Spotify editors clock that a song is trending, they’ll give it prominence in playlists like Hot Hits UK or New Music Friday which in turn can launch a song to success overnight thanks to its millions of captive subscribers. There’s also Spotify’s Discovery Mode, a tool that claims to give artists the chance to make sure their tracks are hitting new audiences. When this is turned on by the artist, Spotify says it will “add that signal to the algorithms that determine personalised listening sessions” and charge a commission on streams funnelled through Discovery mode. It’s this kind of playlist culture that’s completely reshaped the way we listen to music. On one hand, if you’re an independent artist lucky enough to land a spot on one of Spotify’s major playlists it can launch your mainstream career. On the other, herding everyone towards the same group of songs has homogenised our listening habits and potentially killed off the drive and individuality of people curating their own tastes and library of tracks and artists.
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All of that could go some way in explaining why ‘Espresso’ is so pervasive on our feeds. “I’ve listened to it once or twice,” Dunya, a regular Spotify user from London tells me. “But it keeps being picked as my next song. I’ve noticed this because I’ve explicitly changed songs when I was feeling more angst and it wasn’t the vibe.” Similarly, another Spotify user Harlie, who gravitates towards “sad music and songwriter types like Lana Del Rey and Gracie Abrams” explains she’d never listened to ‘Espresso’ but is also consistently being served it as her next track.
To be clear, this isn’t to diminish Sabrina Carpenter or ‘Espresso’, which is an impressively lean and catchy pop song doused in the fun and entendre that she’s become much-loved for. Rather, it’s the questions it raises about the sheer prevalence of it that seems to disregard genres and listening habits. Over on Twitter, people are telling a similar story. “I’m playing a hip-hop/rnb radio: Kendrick Lamar, Tinashe, Doechii, SXA,” one person writes. “And then suddenly…Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter. I love the song but that’s not the vibe of the Spotify radio I’m going for????” Another adds: “The Spotify algorithm has given me Sabrina Carpenter – either it’s broken or it thinks my usual selection is too depress
ing.” Dr Chris Anderton, Associate Professor in Cultural Economy and music business specialist, suggests there could also be a financial element at play when it comes to ‘Espresso’’s prominence. He points out that Spotify recently changed its autoplay feature so that tracks are chosen based on ‘recommendations’ as opposed to its previous model of what the user had been listening to. Anderton tells NME that shrewd viral marketing by Sabrina Carpenter’s record label (Island Records, part of Universal Music) could also be why ‘Espresso’ has taken over, naming her Coachella appearance, links to Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan (who she also namechecked in one of her viral freestyle outros to track ‘Nonsense’), support slot for Taylor Swift on her Eras tour, and the song’s lyrical one-liners acting as perfect fodder for TikTok, as some examples.
Anderton also says we need to take into account that Carpenter’s label, Universal Music owns shares in Spotify, as does the company Tencent, which then in turn owns shares in Universal Music, while Spotify itself owns shares in Tencent. Are you keeping up? “These major corporations are therefore linked to each other financially in various ways, while Spotify is reliant on the major labels in particular for access to the catalogues of music that are driving its growth. It needs to play to their tune,” he explains.
These industry tactics aren’t necessarily new, but have shifted shape as streaming increasingly dictates how successful an artist and their release will be. And while there’s nothing to explicitly suggest that this has been the case with Carpenter more so than other artists, or at all, it’s interesting to consider how these kinds of negotiations could fasttrack certain songs if a label decides to prioritise and push a particular artist.
But here’s the thing. While Spotify and artists and their teams can pump everything into a track going viral and make it the holding music to those moments when you don’t have your own song queued, they also need people to then choose to engage with it for the momentum to keep going. Something that is happening for Sabrina Carpenter. Perhaps it’s the eternal lure of hitting the repeat button to marvel at lyrics like “Walked in and dream came trued it for ya” and find ways to add “Mountain Dew it for ya” into our everyday lexicon. Spotify certainly seems to suggest as much, claiming that even comparing ‘Espresso’ to other viral tracks like Benson Boone’s TikTok hit ‘Beautiful Things’, ‘Espresso’ is “comfortably higher” with 257 million streams globally and nearly 6 million playlists under its belt.
