Spotify makes Monday playlists for you
LOS ANGELES — If It’s Monday, it’s time for a new personalized playlist from Spotify.
The music streaming subscription service, which got some high-level competition from Apple in June when it launched Apple Music, is fighting back today with a new free feature: every Monday, Spotify will create a two-hour playlist based on the music it thinks you love.
The feature is called Discover Weekly, and it’s rolling out today. It may take a few weeks to show up in all Spotify users apps.
The songs selected in Discover Weekly are based on both your listening as what friends put into their playlists.
So if you play a lot of Meaghan Trainor, Tori Kelly and Arianna Grande in your Spotify, you could expect to get a weekly dose of teen oriented pop.
Playlists are a big deal with the streaming services. Spotify offers themed playlists from friends, magazines (Entertainment Weekly), personalities (fashion icon Rachel Zoe) and even president Barack Obama.
Now, with Discover Weekly, a new playlist will arrive in the app, in the playlist section.
Whether consumers will like what they get, however, is questionable.
Of the 30 songs pushed to me, I love 5 of them, enjoying hearing another 5 again, liked a handful of new ones, and absolutely hated two or three of the selections.
Yes to Donald Fagen, Leon Russell, Stevie Wonder, Robert Cray and Bonnie Raitt, but what was Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” doing in there?
I hate that song. Joe Cocker was a fantastic singer, but don’t make me suffer through “You are so Beautiful.”
Unlike Pandora, there’s no like or dislike button to tell Spotify how you feel about the selection.
The only thing you can do is to work harder at what songs you play in the app, because remember kids, we’re being graded on what we’re hearing.
Apple Music also is chock full of playlists, and generates new ones daily, and like Spotify suggests albums it thinks you might want to listen to.
Spotify charges $9.99 monthly to subscribe and counts 20 million paying subscribers.
Follow Jefferson Graham on Twitter, where he’s @jeffersongraham, and check out his daily audio #TalkingTech reports on Stitcher and TuneIn.