The universality of skipping behaviours on music streaming platforms

Abstract: A recent study of skipping behaviour on music streaming platforms has shown that the skip profile for a given song -- i.e. the measure of the skipping rate as a function of the time in the song -- can be seen as some intrinsic characteristic of the song, in the sense that it is both very specific and highly stable over time and geographical regions. In this paper, we take this analysis one step further by introducing a simple model of skip behaviours, in which the skip profile for a given song is viewed as the response to a small number of events that happen within it. In particular, it allows us to identify accurately the timing of the events that trigger skip responses, as well as the fraction of users who skip following each these events. Strikingly, the responses triggered by individual events appears to follow a temporal profile that is consistent across songs, genres, devices and listening contexts, suggesting that people react to musical surprises in a universal way.