Spotify Debuts 'Release Radar' to Suggest New Music Based on Favorite Artists

Friday August 5, 2016 7:22 AM PDT by Mitchel Broussard
Spotify today announced a new curated music section of its popular streaming platform, called Release Radar, that will automatically update every Friday with new music from artists already in each user's library. The company said that the section will help its listeners stay "on top of the latest singles by your favorite artists," without having to manually search for new music.

The new Release Radar -- which will be found in the New Releases for You section within Discover -- will gather up to two full hours "of the newest drops from the artists you follow and listen to the most," as well as introducing its listeners to new music after intelligently analyzing listening habits. The new update is a version of Spotify's existing feature Discover Weekly, which gives users music suggestions of entirely new artists and singles every Monday, instead of ones they already have been exposed to.

spotify release radar
“With the huge amount of new music released every week, it can be difficult to keep up with the latest tracks,” says Matt Ogle, Senior Product Owner at Spotify. “With Release Radar, we wanted to create the simplest way for you to find all the newly released music that matters the most to you, in one playlist.”
Most streaming services have been giving users similar features over the past few years, including Apple Music's "For You" tab, which accumulates recommendations based on a liking system coupled with each user's most listened-to music. Instead of one giant playlist like Release Radar and Discover Weekly in Spotify, Apple Music populates the For You section with custom-created playlists for music streaming based on things like the time of the day and moods, as well as giving basic new artist suggestions.

Apple Music is just over a year old and was reported to have 15 million subscribers on the anniversary of its launch this past June. Since then the service has debuted a number of exclusive tracks from popular musicians, and expanded to a few new territories, including Israel and Korea. In comparison, Spotify said recently that it has 30 million paid subscribers, and 100 million total monthly active users worldwide, who take advantage of its free service.

Over the summer, Apple and Spotify butted heads over a few changes Apple announced coming to the App Store -- particularly a new revenue split for subscriptions and ads in search results -- which Spotify said was "a nice gesture, but doesn't get to the core of the problem." Jonathan Prince, Spotify's head of corporate communications and global policy, mentioned specifically that "Apple still insists on inserting itself between developers and their customers," making it difficult to read into subscriber analytics, like finding out why customers churn.

Spotify users should begin seeing Release Radar soon, since the company said its wide rollout begins today. Spotify Music is available for free on the iOS App Store. [Direct Link]

Tags: Spotify, Apple Music
19 comments


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v0lume4
32 months ago
So thankful for this. For years now I've wished that I could have an easy way of keeping up with my favorite artists' songs. Now it's done for me--automatically!

Spotify is one of those few services that I pay for where I feel it legitimately gets better every few months. It isn't stagnant. I love it!
Rating: 6 Votes
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chugg
32 months ago
Looks like another good addition to discover weekly. Spotify seems like it's legitimately improving its features all the time while all Apple is interested in doing is moneyhatting exclusives.
Rating: 5 Votes
Avatar
KALLT
32 months ago
Admittedly, the discovery of new songs and playlists is better on Spotify. I still struggle to get Apple Music to give me some good suggestions. I’ve seen the For You section repeat itself for months now and many of the playlists it suggests there look so much alike in terms of artists and such that I do not actually discover anything new. In the New section you have these curated playlists, but I really do not know where to begin, because the names of the curators mean nothing to me. Sometimes I go to the activities or genre section, but there isn’t exactly a boatload of playlists there either. I think this large playlist that updates itself based on your tastes is a fantastic feature of Spotify and I really miss this on Apple Music. Often I just want to press play and not fiddle around looking for playlists I might like. Apple Music just needs something like a ‘For You’ radio. I also feel that Apple Music is not tailored as much to different countries either, Spotify seems to have a more country-centric approach.
Rating: 3 Votes
Avatar
friedmud
32 months ago
Just checked out my Release Radar: looks awesome! Great addition to Discover Weekly... it's new stuff... but a bit more familiar.

My favorite part of Spotify is the automatically updating playlists. I love that I can set this new playlist to download to my phone and it will automatically update and download to my phone every week. I always know that I have many hours of up to date music in my phone due to Spotify.

Contrast this with Apple Music (which I tried the free trial of... and REALLY wanted to like... especially because of Apple Watch integration!). On Apple Music you have to go hunt for new playlists all the time. And you have to do it through that ridiculous interface with "music magazines".

When you do find one: guess what? It's static. That magazine isn't going to update it. In a month all of that music is going to be stale and you have to go manually hunt for new playlists again (and remove the old ones from your phone if you've synced them). Ugh.

For anyone that likes to stay on top of new music (especially indie)... Spotify is amazing... and getting better all the time.
Rating: 3 Votes
Avatar
Szarky
32 months ago
Discover Weekly usually gets me to click on that little "+" button to save a couple songs. I've been really happy with it. Just wish the Family Plan would come to Canada. Tempting to switch to Apple Music for that since I'm now paying $20/month between 2 people in my household for it but it's worth it to us. Love the service and the desktop/mobile apps, especially not having to use iTunes. Apple Music would need it's own desktop app for me to consider it I think since I use it at work everyday.
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I have an idea Spotify Stories :cool: ...

Spotify has a few more discovery still features coming if you're part of the TestFlight beta testing of Spotify you'll get to test some of the new stuff before they're released.

What beta do you speak of? :eek:
Rating: 3 Votes
Avatar
Szarky
32 months ago

So thankful for this. For years now I've wished that I could have an easy way of keeping up with my favorite artists' songs. Now it's done for me--automatically!

Spotify is one of those few services that I pay for where I feel it legitimately gets better every few months. It isn't stagnant. I love it!

And their support service is great too. I had a problem with a bug with offline playlists that were downloaded to the phone not showing up when I was in a No Service area. They e-mailed me back really fast with a solution.
Rating: 2 Votes
Avatar
naeS1Sean
32 months ago
Great idea. I love that companies are helping unknown music become known. Some of the best music I've ever heard has 5,000 likes on Facebook. lol
Rating: 1 Votes
Avatar
bushido
32 months ago
Their playlists, discovery feature and thought through categories is why i will never switch back to AM after using the trial.

Do playlists auto update on AM finally?
Rating: 1 Votes
Avatar
SR71
32 months ago

Admittedly, the discovery of new songs and playlists is better on Spotify. I still struggle to get Apple Music to give me some good suggestions. I’ve seen the For You section repeat itself for months now and many of the playlists it suggests there look so much alike in terms of artists and such that I do not actually discover anything new. In the New section you have these curated playlists, but I really do not know where to begin, because the names of the curators mean nothing to me. Sometimes I go to the activities or genre section, but there isn’t exactly a boatload of playlists there either. I think this large playlist that updates itself based on your tastes is a fantastic feature of Spotify and I really miss this on Apple Music. Often I just want to press play and not fiddle around looking for playlists I might like. Apple Music just needs something like a ‘For You’ radio. I also feel that Apple Music is not tailored as much to different countries either, Spotify seems to have a more country-centric approach.



Pretty much my exact thoughts. With Apple Music I felt like I constantly had to change playlists just to listen to music I'd like. The constant fiddling with what was playing was annoying. To make matters worse, Apple Music playlists are usually really small (~20 songs) which means that if I skip over any songs I don't like, I'll usually finish a playlist in less than 30-45 minutes. Contrast that with Spotify's significantly larger playlists that I can listen to for hours even if I skip over a lot of songs.

Another thing is how the Apple Music playlists are named... they make it much more difficult for me to identify (at a quick glance) what kind of music the playlist will contain. "Discover Weekly" is easily recognized as a new music every week for you to discover. Playlists like "Around the World in 20 Tracks," "I <3 Myself," or "Apple Music and Chill?" don't tell you anything. Is this new music, old music, pop, country, a mix, etc? The overall experience is just not that great.

I completely agree. This is the exact experience I have had as well. I also think that Apple Music really sucks when it comes to actually managing these playlists. Unlike normal playlists, you cannot do anything with them. You cannot remove or skip tracks you don’t like, you cannot rename them, you cannot put them into folders, you cannot rearrange them or sort them by anything other than name. Some playlists have really obscure names too so that you hunt for them all time and you can forget about Siri. I now have a list of more than a hundred playlists and I just cannot keep track of them anymore, it clutters everything and makes Apple Music hugely complicated. Apple changed exactly nought in that area in iOS 10 and focussed on the wrong things once again (redesign for looks, not redesign for substantive improvements).


You hit the nail on the head. See my post above, it's pretty much exactly what you just said. Glad I'm not the only one who has similar thoughts about Apple Music and it's flaws.
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Their playlists, discovery feature and thought through categories is why i will never switch back to AM after using the trial.

Do playlists auto update on AM finally?


From my recent use of Apple Music, nope. Playlists are static, which sucks.
Rating: 1 Votes
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Rigby
32 months ago
This is one of those great ideas where you wonder why nobody has thought of it before. Just started listening to my "Release Radar" list ... it's awesome. :) I have a huge number of artists in my library (in part thanks to "Discover Weekly") and it would be impossible to keep up with their new releases manually.
Rating: 1 Votes
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