How Spotify counts streams
Every song on Spotify has a public play count: the number next to the song on the artist's page and in the album view of the app. A play counts once someone has listened for 30 seconds, and replays count again, so one fan can add a lot of plays. This page reads that number straight from Spotify, for any song you paste.
Why the count moves once a day
Spotify works out new play counts once a day and puts them out in one go. The figure stands still for about a day, then jumps by a whole day of plays. A song with 1.3 million plays a day goes up by 1.3 million in a single step.
The live estimate
Between those steps the big number runs at the song's own pace: its plays per day from Spotify's last updates, spread over the day (the dashed line above). When Spotify's next figure comes in, the counter eases over to it. Spotify's exact figure is always right under the big number, with the time we checked it.
Where the daily numbers come from
Once we have read a song on two different days, the pace is worked out from Spotify's own figures. Until then we use the song's last daily step as recorded by kworb.net, which saves Spotify's numbers every day. A song neither of us has seen before starts without an estimate and shows Spotify's figure as it is.
Album streams
Paste an album link, or open a song and press Album streams, to see the play count of every song on the album and the total. It is the quickest way to see which songs carry a record. For artists, the Spotify monthly listeners ranking shows how many people play them each month.