Spotify monthly active users

As wolves have multiplied in the Northern Rockies, Spotify users have grown, a correlation of 0.983 that connects apex predators to music streaming with the wild confidence of a chart that imagines a wolf howling along to a curated playlist. The pack expands, the subscribers accumulate, and both trends measure growth in their respective ecosystems: one ecological, one digital, neither aware of the other's territory.

Wolf populations grew from about 1,700 to over 2,700 between 2015 and 2022. Spotify MAUs grew from about 90 million to over 500 million. Both are growth curves in the same period: wolves because conservation policy works, Spotify because music streaming is the default consumption mode. The shared variable is simply the 2010s being a decade of growth for both biological and digital populations.

Eight years of wolves and Spotify is a correlation between two forms of proliferation: the pack hunting elk in Idaho and the playlist shuffling in Brooklyn, both expanding because their respective ecosystems support them. The wolf howls, the speaker plays, and neither needs the other's subscription. The territory grows. The library grows. The chart maps both.