Harnessing Spotify’s data to quantify the most timeless music of all time

In an incredible display of visual interactivity, Polygraph’s editor and in-house data scientist Matt Daniels has used Spotify plays from 2014 to determine which songs from pop music’s past stand the test of time by measuring most-played music by users from each decade. The results are in: Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was the most popular song from the 90s on Spotify in 2014. But as Daniels notes, the data is skewed and nor does it represent all critically-acclaimed artists, particularly as Spotify’s user base tends be representative of today’s younger generation predominantly in their mid-20s.