

Is there anything worse than those comments that just say "FIRST"? As if being the first to click on a link makes you somehow deserving of a medal.
Yet, sadly, in hipster land, 'being early' on new music and new acts does actually give you social currency. Naturally, you have to disown them as soon as more than ten people have heard of them, dismissing their 'later work' as 'compromised' and 'not as raw'.
But it's always been hard to quantify exactly how 'on it' you are - but not any longer, as Spotify's new tool is here to separate the leaders from the followers.
The streaming service's Found Them First tool, "gives you the chance to see which breakout artists you discovered early on, the first date you listened to a new artist, and reveals a Spotify-generated, customised playlist of other similar breakout artists you have yet to discover. The top 1-15% of listeners are considered “early listeners” and will be able to see this ranking."
"Breakout Artists" (we presume they mean acts that have got popular, rather than those with unfortunate facial spots) are defined as having a total number of at least 20 million streams and a growth rate of 2000% between January 2013 and June 2015 - so they'd have had to have become reasonably big to count as having 'made it'.
Click here to see how well you get on and - naturally - if you want to boost your discovery rate in future, check out our very own ShortListen for recommendations. You'll be looking down on other people and criticising their musical knowledge in no time at all, and that's something to aspire to, right?
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As Content Director of Shortlist, Marc likes nothing more than to compile endless lists of an evening by candlelight. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.