User curated playlists tend to NOT shuffle song order frequently and commonly feature “the hits” - sometimes, even 10+ year old songs.
They don’t rotate as quickly as FM radio stations or DSP-related editorial playlists.
This is very common and to be expected.
A few reasons why:
1) Change too quickly oftentimes results in lower playlist retention.
Example: Spotify’s Top Christian + Gospel playlist used to average 4k-7k streams per day per artist in 2021. Around January/February 2022, they rebranded with aggressive changes to their playlist, Since then, audience retention has dropped to where most artists whose analytics we can see that are on it get 1.8k-4k streams daily on the playlist.
2) Global trends in contemporary worship follow behind USA trends.
Many of our curators live around the world, including the Philippines, Peru, Faroe Islands, Netherlands, etc.
These curators tend to have “more dated” tastes and like to hang onto the older stuff a little longer than USA listeners because the songs are still fresh to them.