One of the benefits of the music streaming revolution is that we’re never going to run out of music to listen to. You’ll never get through the tens of millions of songs in the Spotify catalog. You can, though, spend the rest of your life listening to brand-new music.
All those choices can also make it challenging to figure out what you should actually queue up next in your playlists. Still, Spotify has plenty of features to help you might not have realized just how many ways there are to discover new music on this platform. These are the best ones.
1) Ask AI to make a playlist
We’ll start with one of Spotify’s newest features, AI Playlist. It’s only available in the mobile app for Premium users. It takes text prompts (like bots such as ChatGPT) and turns them into custom playlists.
So, you might ask for a queue of songs you’ve never heard, but that sums up the early 90s rock scene in the US. Or, you could ask for tracks to accompany an evening jog. From the Your Library tab, tap the + (plus) icon, then choose AI Playlist from the list.
2) Browse through your daily mixes
Open the Spotify app or web player’s home screen, and you’ll see the streaming service serves up multiple daily mixes for you. These cover all aspects of your music listening history and are usually themed around particular artists or music genres.
Click on any of the mixes to start listening—you should get a mix of new stuff and music you’ve heard. If you hear something you like, save it to another playlist because your daily mixes will be refreshed in the next 24 hours.
3) Create blends with friends
Recommendations from friends are a fine way to discover new music, and while we might not have mixtapes anymore, we do have Spotify’s Blend feature. It combines your tastes with other people’s tastes in a single playlist you can share.
In the desktop app, click the search box at the top of the screen, then choose Made For You and Create a Blend to get started. Then, via the Invite link, you can select the other people you want to tap for music recommendations (you can invite up to 10 people).
4) Use the AI DJ
Another option courtesy of artificial intelligence: If you click in the search box at the top of the desktop app interface and then choose Made For You and DJ, you’ll get a custom mix of old and new songs curated by AI (complete with DJ-like comments between songs).
If something comes up that’s not your jam, you can always click on the DJ button just to the right of the playback controls to have the AI pick something else. It works better than expected, including the AI chat, but it is exclusive to Premium users.
5) Find playlists made by others
You may not have noticed if you’ve been buried in your own Spotify library. Still, plenty of people who use the streaming platform put out public playlists for other listeners to queue up—and they can be a really useful way of discovering new tracks you’ve never heard.
Click in the search box at the top of the desktop app interface and search for anything you like. It could be an artist, a genre, a decade, a mood, or anything you like. Choose Playlists underneath, and scroll down to see some of the Spotify community’s mixes.
6) Add to your current playlists
Load any of your playlists in the Spotify desktop interface, scroll down to the bottom, and you should see a selection of recommended tracks to add to the end of the playlist—songs based on the artists, genre, and mood of the current selection.
Some of these tracks will be plucked from your existing Spotify library, but you’ll also encounter some new stuff. It works well because the picks will match what you’ve already chosen, so the extra songs won’t break the vibe of the playlist.
7) Discovery new music every week
You may have missed it amid everything that Spotify serves up, but it produces a playlist of 30 new songs every Monday. They’re all tracks you haven’t heard before, and all the picks are based on what you’ve listened to.
This is one of the oldest ways to discover new music on Spotify, and it remains one of the best, too. As with the daily mixes, if you come across something you like, remember to save it to your library or to another playlist before the recommended mix is refreshed.
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