Spotify has announced the launch of "Daily Mix," a new intelligent playlist system -- in the vein of Discover Weekly and Release Radar -- that puts together a "near endless" collection of songs for users every day (via The Verge). The songs include a mix of music and artists they have listened to previously, as well as new music based off their interests.
When Daily Mix is updated each day, Spotify will introduce "between one and six mixes" to each user, mostly depending on how broad their music tastes are. Each mix avoids specific labels and instead opts for visual album clues as to what's inside of each, with four album covers providing context of the songs within each playlist. Matt Ogle, leader of music discovery and personalization at Spotify, said "we found that the mixes were much better received when we leaned back and let people describe them themselves."
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It uses the same basic approach as Discover Weekly, selecting songs based on your listening habits. "But that’s where the similarities end," said Matt Ogle, who helps lead development of music discovery and personalization at Spotify. "In a lot of ways it's the opposite of Discover Weekly." Instead of trying to take the work out of finding music that's new to you, "Daily Mix is trying to take the work out of hitting a button and always hearing music that you love."
Instead of the refresh that Discover Weekly and Release Radar get each Monday and Friday, respectively, users might notice that Daily Mixes are much more subtly altered. Songs within playlists might be added or removed, specific mixes could get swapped out for new collections, "but it won't be a complete refresh of songs each time." Ogle compared Daily Mixes to radio stations, because of the way each mix sticks to specific themes and moods instead of throwing a bunch of random genres together.
In mid-September, Spotify announced that it has reached over 40 million paid subscribers, in contrast to Apple Music's more than 17 million paid subscribers confirmed earlier in the month. Apple continues to bolster various aspects of its streaming music service, most recently introducing "My New Music Mix" and "My Favorites Mix" into Apple Music as the company's answer to Spotify's weekly curated music recommendations.
Users worldwide on the Spotify iOS [Direct Link] and Android apps should start seeing Daily Mix playlists today, whether they have a paid subscription or not. The company noted that new users will gain access to Daily Mix "after approximately two weeks of listening," and a rollout to additional platforms is coming soon.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)The Discovery Playlists are the best in the industry.
Funny anecdote on those playlists.... We have a Sonos speaker in our master bedroom, and my wife likes to listen to thunder/rain storm stuff while we sleep. I made the mistake of playing it from Spotify for a couple weeks (didn't know it was a mistake at the time). 100+ hours of playing soft thunderstorms over a couple weeks turned my Discover Weekly playlist into a nightmarish mix of Enya and soft piano ballads that made me want to jump off a bridge. So I downloaded some good ones and dropped them into iTunes and play them from there on the Sonos speaker now. No more playlist problems.
Isn't this essentially just Genius playlists? Which have been around for over a decade? I don't see the big deal.
No matter what you call it, Spotify's personalized playlists just work so much better then previous systems for me. Discover Weekly is just fantastic. Rarely a dud and lots of great songs I didn't know before. I have a playlist where I save the best songs from Discover Weekly and it literally contains hundreds now. If these new mixes are only half as good ...