Spotify #1 artist annual streams

It turns out that the number of times someone streams 'Blinding Lights' correlates almost perfectly with how many Chinese citizens decided to invent something that year, which is either a remarkable window into global consciousness or evidence that the universe is run by a cosmic bureaucrat with a terrible filing system. We have somehow discovered that pop music streams and patent applications move together like they're reading from the same script, which suggests either that inventors get their best ideas while listening to the Weeknd, or that we are all just really good at finding patterns in the dark. The correlation is 0.984, which is the kind of number that makes statisticians nervous.

What's actually happening here is almost certainly that both metrics are riding the same great wave of global internet adoption and economic growth from 2015 to 2021. As more Chinese citizens got internet access and as disposable income rose, both streaming consumption and the resources available for innovation scaled up together, which is to say they were both responding to the same underlying boom in connectivity and prosperity. Consider that Spotify streams worldwide more than doubled during this period (from roughly 1 billion daily to 2.5 billion), while Chinese patent applications grew from about 1.3 million annually to over 1.6 million, and both of these numbers are effectively just measuring 'how many more people have money and electricity than before.'

The real lesson is that we live in an age where finding a 98% correlation between almost anything and almost anything else is only a spreadsheet away, which should either comfort or alarm you depending on your mood. The fact that Spotify hits and Chinese patents move in perfect synchrony tells us almost nothing about either one, and everything about how easy it is to mistake coincidence for causation when you're armed with data and free time. Sometimes two things just grow together. That's all.