Popularity

Popularity

Popularity lets a playlist lean towards hits, album tracks or deep cuts. The classic use is "90s alternative rock, but only the hits".

How tracks are rated

Each track gets a score from 0 to 100: its plays as a percentage of the plays of that artist's most played song. The artist's biggest song scores 100. The score is relative within each artist, so a small band's one hit still scores high and doesn't get buried by huge bands.

Plays are counted, not listeners. A song people keep replaying ranks above one many people hear once or twice.

Tier	Score
Hit	50 or more
Album track	15 to 49.9
Deep cut	under 15, or not rated at all

A track that has no rating counts as a deep cut.

Where the numbers come from

• ListenBrainz is the main source. It needs your ListenBrainz token and the artist's MusicBrainz ID. naviList collects those in the background.
• Last.fm fills in only for artists ListenBrainz has no data on, and only if you've set a Last.fm API key. Last.fm tracks are scored against Last.fm's own top song for that artist, so the two scales never mix.

With neither a token nor a key, nothing is rated and every track counts as a deep cut. See Integrations.

Ratings are fetched in the background after a library sync, one artist at a time, at roughly one request a second. They're refreshed after about 180 days. The Services page shows progress on the Navidrome card, such as 812 of 979 artists rated · 30 no data · 137 pending. See Background Jobs.

Using it

Click + Add condition and choose Popularity, on a block or in Global Conditions. It starts at Hit 25 / Album track 75 / Deep cut 0. Change the percentages to taste:

• Hit 100, others 0 gives hits only.
• Hit 0, Album track 50, Deep cut 50 skips the hits.
• Hit 40, others blank gives 40% hits, with the rest split between the other two tiers.

The row doesn't filter the block. It sets the mix of what the block's conditions allow.

Rules for the numbers

• A tier at 0% is never used.
• If you fill in all three, they must total 100%.
• If you fill in only some, they must total less than 100%, and the blank tiers share the rest.
• At least one tier must be above 0%.

The builder shows a message when the numbers don't work.

What happens when a tier runs out

If a block doesn't have enough hits to fill its share, the unused slots go to the other tiers that are above 0%. So a block can still come out full. It only comes out short when every allowed tier runs out.

With Studio / Live

If a block uses both, the Studio / Live split is applied first, then Popularity inside each side. See Studio and Live.

Popularity is not on by default

New playlists don't include a Popularity row. If your library has few ratings (no token, no key, or ratings still running), a split that gives deep cuts 0% can leave a playlist with nothing in it, because unrated tracks count as deep cuts. Check the Services page before relying on it.