Spotify Is Encouraging the Hipster in You With 'Found Them First'

The world's most popular music streaming service, Spotify, also wants to be the world's most hipster music streaming service, by giving you valuable insights on just how good you are at spotting new artists that have gone on to become wildly popular. The service has unveiled a new tool called 'Found Them First', which gives you the information you need to boast about your talent-scouting skills to your friends.

Found Them First is available only to registered Spotify users. The tool scans your Spotify listening history and tells you if you were among the top 15 percent of early listeners for a particular 'breakout' artist that has since gone on to accumulate more than 20 million streams, as well as a growth rate of at least 2000 percent between January 2013 and June 2015. If you do happen to be an early listener of a breakout artist, then congratulations! You get to go onto your social media accounts and boast to the world about your hipster credentials.

It's unclear which artists actually qualify as breakout artists, but the website's marketing material includes FKA Twigs and Lorde as examples of the kind of artists you had to be listening to while they were still struggling to establish themselves.

Spotify was recently in the news for its user data collection policy, which asked for access to the user's contacts and photos. The service defended itself by stating that he information need not be shared, and the company does not intend to misuse any data collected.