Play count for short songs is bugged

[omriwolf]

Plan

Premium

Device

Desktop

Operating System

Encountered on Mac OS X, but probably relevant to all platforms

My Question or Issue

The plays counter is bugged on short songs, anything below 30s maybe doesn't count a listen correctly.

You can go to every album that includes some skits and you'll see that very short skits have 1% of the expected views.

I think the best example of this is Late Registration by Kanye, we have:

skit #1 - 0:33s runtime - 19,880,280 plays.

skit #2 - 0:31s runtime - 18,966,706 plays.

skit #3 - 0:24s runtime - 26,856 plays.

skit #4 - 1:18s runtime - 11,129,496 plays.

More examples:

The Death of Slim Shady (Eminem) - All You Got - skit (0:24s, 110,000 plays compared to "Breaking News - skit", 0:37s - 21M)

Scum (Napalm Death) - The Kill or You Suffer (0:23s/0:04s, 4869/8423 plays, average > 400k plays on the album)

Hurry Up Tomorrow (The Weekend) - I Can't **bleep**ing Sing (0:12s, 3397 plays, average >1M plays on the album)

Basically every song with < 30s runtime is bugged probably.

I imagine there's some polling going with a 30s interval causing misses for short songs.