If you're recognised by one name — Madonna, Bono, Cher, Rihanna, Beyoncé, Adele — it's likely you're already pretty powerful.

But British singer-songwriter Adele has taken power to a whole new level by convincing music streaming service Spotify to change how they do business when it comes to the default order in which their customers listen to an album.

There have been quite a few artists who have campaigned for Spotify to change its default setting on albums to play tracks in order. But when Adele spoke, Spotify listened.

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A Spotify spokesperson said in a statement:

Will all Spotify users notice this change?

The short answer is no.

If you're not paying for Spotify, tracks will continue to be automatically shuffled, and you won't be able to listen to an album from start to finish anyway, you're at the mercy of a jukebox-style running order.

This new change will affect Spotify's Premium users who pay a minimum of $11.95 a month to access their content.

From illegal downloading to legitimate file-sharing

Remember Napster? That file-sharing service was created in 1999 by an American college student and allowed users to share electronic copies of music stored on personal computers over the internet.

That's how all this started. But the way Napster operated caused a massive backlash, the legal battle that ensued led to a new order of business when it came to copyright and piracy.

Heavy metal band Metallica was at the forefront of the fight to protect their music, angering some fans who they'd outed publicly for sharing their copyrighted music over the web.

Napster has relaunched and is now considered a legitimate e-commerce enterprise, but in 2001 – in its original incarnation – it was shut down.

It had already, though, changed the way people felt about ease of access to music. And the music industry was forced to adapt.

Spotify was launched in 2008 and, to date, has more than 70 million songs on its platform. It's also home to about 3.2 million podcast titles.

It's currently the most popular streaming service in the world across 184 markets. It boasts 381 million users, 172 million are subscribers.

Adele's trajectory

When Adele released her debut album titled 19 in 2008, that's how old she was. She followed it up with albums titled 21, 25, and now 30.

Her debut album sold more than 6.5 million copies, and immediately catapulted Adele to superstardom.

She won Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the Grammys the following year.

Her latest album has been emphatically well received by critics, with Rolling Stone saying, "30 is the Best Adele Album Yet," in their five-star review.

Why Adele connects with audiences

In Adele's One Night Only, available on 7Plus, Oprah Winfrey asked the singer what gives her the "freedom and courage" to "fall apart and expose" herself in public through her music in the midst of a "gotcha culture."

"I think the reason I'm so brave to do it in my career so far was because, again, music helped me in many situations," Adele said.

She said sometimes she felt she went too far in sharing private information, but chose not to scale it back.

"Nothing is as scary as what I've been through over the last two to three years behind closed doors," she said.

"So, I'm not afraid about what people may or might not do now."

And there you have it. Adele is powerful, because she shares her heart and soul on record, and people can relate to that. People listen. Including big tech companies.