New study shows one quarter of Spotify tracks are skipped in first five seconds

Published by Paul Lamere on his Music Machinery blog, the study sought to specifically look into data regarding the skipping of tracks, defining the term “skip” as “any time the listener abandons a song before the song finishes. It could be because the listener explicitly presses the skip button, or it could be that they searched for and started another song before the current song finished, or they clicked on a different song in the playlist.”

Using data provided by Spotify, Lamerre compiled several graphs depicting skipping behavior by percentage/duration of song played as well as by age, gender, time of day and much more. The study pulls some surprising numbers, with listeners skipping, on average, one song every four minutes and 48.6% of all Spotify plays being skipped before the song finishes. Looking further, it finds that 24.14% are skipped within the first 5 seconds, 28.97% in the first 10, and 35.05% in the first 30.

You can read Lamere’s full analysis in his Music Machinery post here.