The Long Tail lets you discover your fave artists’ least played Spotify songs

Every artist has them: songs that aren’t the big hits we all know and love and sing in the shower. Sometimes this is because they’re not that great. But for artists with huge back catalogues, they can also be forgotten gems. Or rather, they were. A new desktop app called The Long Tail will instantly make a playlist of the 50 least played songs by any artist, so you can rediscover a new favourite – or confirm that your tastes have been unabashedly populist all along.

Developer Alexandre Passant says he made the app in between watching World Cup Games, which is a creative alternative to frustrated weeping. Just go to the site, input the artist of your choice, and in a couple of seconds, you’ll have a playlist that automatically opens in your Spotify account as soon as you hit ‘play’.

I’ve always loved (ha) Dolly Parton but post-Glastonbury brilliance I’m especially keen to hear more of her music, so I used The Long Tail to find her 50 least played, which is how I discovered she once recorded ‘I’ll Oilwells Love You’. I’m sure she had her reasons.

As The Next Web points out, not all of the tracks listed as least played are available in the UK, so the issue might not be that some songs are super unpopular so much as that we don’t actually have streaming access to them. Get on that, Spotify, please.