Here’s why Spotify playlists are about to get a whole lot more personalised

AI is going to be dictating your music tastes more and more 
That face you make when you listen to a really good song on Spotify
Bruce Mars / Unsplash
Amelia Heathman27 March 2019

There are millions of playlists across Spotify and sometimes trying to find the right mix or song to listen to can leave you with choice paralysis.

Thanks to Spotify’s artificial intelligence, the platform’s curated playlists are going to become a lot more personalised.

According to a blog post, some Spotify playlists are going to be personalised for each listener based on their particular taste. For instance, if you’re listening to the Happy Hits curated playlist on your Spotify account, it will feature different songs than when your friend listens to Happy Hits on their account.

The company says it has been testing this feature for a while, and found that people were more likely to listen to the playlist for longer because the AI was serving up the songs they were going to enjoy.

As well, these personalised playlists also helped people to discover new music. After listening to a new song on a personalised curated list, the number of listeners who decided to seek out the track on their own and listen to it again was up 80 per cent. That’s good news for artists because more plays means more revenue.

Spotify is pegging this system as beneficial to the artists on its platform. Now, artists can share unique links to a particular playlist their song is featured on. If a fan clicks on this link via social media or an email, then that song will automatically be served on that playlist. Again, more plays for the artist means more money, but also this helps the algorithm learn more too about an individual’s listening preferences.

Your Happy Hits playlist is now going to feature different songs to the one you see on your friend's account
Spotify

The Stockholm-based company is often criticised for not paying its artists enough money for streaming their songs, which has led to very public battles with the likes of Taylor Swift in the past. Yet, Spotify reigns supreme in the streaming world, with 96 million paid subscribers.

It’ll be interesting to see how Spotify takes what it is learning about personalisation and applies it to podcasts. The company has been making major moves in the podcasting realm recently, acquiring the likes of Gimlet Media earlier this year, and podcasting studio Parcast only this week.

Imagine personalised podcast feeds to make it easier to find the next killer show. That’s something we can get on board with.

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