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

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.

“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]