No Play Spotify Songs Need Love Too

Have you ever wondered what happens to those unloved tracks on Spotify, those with almost no plays at all? The unloved Animal Collective live albums, the forgotten ringtone tributes to Prince, One Night Only’s biggest hit all languish in musical purgatory, not even thought of for a pity play. Well there’s now a chance to give those tracks some much needed plays thanks to Forgotify. Forgotify is the Spotify equivalent of those adopt a child adverts, except there’s no commitment to keep it and there’s millions more where it came from. The website works by picking a song at random that has zero plays on Spotify, taking you into a world of Bollywood mixtapes, patriotic house, screechy minimalist records and my new favourite country punk noise band.

So in the spirit of showing love to unplayed, here’s the first three five Forgotify chose for me.

“Mcghee” by Lionel Hampton

Xylophone jazz music is what the world hasn’t been waiting for.

“Una Vez … el Eco Se Enfado” by Cuentos en Accion

The first five seconds of this sound like a Go Team reunion record which is then switched to two old Spanish men speaking for three minutes, much like a Go Team record.

“Por Eso Lloro” by Abril 78

The covers looks like a meeting of the Mexican Bullingdon Club. Which is weird because "Por Eso Lloro" actually translates as "wipe this curry of my tie clip you peasant".

Pa Deupe de Moin by Johnny Gomez

Who woulda thought the commentator on Celebrity Deathmatch had a sideline in 50 shades of sway sexy calypso music. This record is actually great, I've been listening to it all morning and now I'm randy for 50-year old housewives taking lunchtime salsa classes at their community centre.

I chatted to one of Fogotify’s designers Nate Gorgon, to find out why anyone should care about a track with no plays and why there’ll always be a zero.

Noisey: So, how did the idea come about?

Nate: My collaborator Lane (Jordan) came across an article with the 4 million unplayed song figure in it, and approached J and myself with the idea. Over the course of a few weeks J worked on the back end, while we designed and wrote (and played around with) the site.

Ok, when you’re not taking care of unloved songs what are your day jobs?

All three of us work in the ad industry. Art director, developer and copywriter, respectively.

So, how does the idea actually work?

The backend accesses each song's popularity tag on Spotify. We pull the songs with a popularity tag of zero, and add it to a sort of playlist that refreshes regularly.

What's the current Forgotify number?

The current number is hard to pin down - new songs are added all the time, and Spotify's popularity tags are sometimes vague.

Do you think the number could be zero (if even for the day)?

We think it would be awesome if it hit zero. People seem to be rallying - who knows, it could happen.

Thanks Nate!

Follow Dan on Twitter: @KeenDang