Drawn from sonic data, user likes, and maybe some old fashioned “ payola,” vibes playlists, in the company’s words, “curate for culture rather than genres.” The whole process is exemplified in Spotify’s description of its POLLEN playlist: “Genre-less.

Their vibes playlists encapsulate the cultural buzz about vibes as the key measure of online life (from “ vibe shift” anxiety to thought pieces and histories). What does vibe look like as data? Spotify has an answer. Together, they show a new way of understanding how culture is made, and how we can make it better. This a partnership between the Data Collective and Public Books, a series called Hacking the Culture Industries, brings you data-driven essays that change how we understand audiobooks, bestselling books, streaming music, video games, influential literary institutions such as the New York Times and the New Yorker, and more. To that end, we created the Post45 Data Collective, an open access site that peer reviews and publishes literary and cultural data. It’s time to use their data to study them.

Culture industries increasingly use our data to sell us their products.

Vibes spotify playlist names