While Apple Music trumpets the human nature of Beats 1 Getting Started With Apple Music - What You Need To Know Getting Started With Apple Music - What You Need To Know After buying Beats last year, Apple finally unleashed its streaming music service on the world. Learn more:A 24/7 radio station curated by UK DJ Zane Lowe, Spotify while making some big changes Everything you need to know about the new Spotify Everything you need to know about the new Spotify Spotify is no longer just a music streaming service. At an event in New York, Spotify launched a host of new features, including video streaming, in a bid to become an entertainment hub for users. Read More
In the last six months alone, the streaming music company has released four cool ways to generate unique playlists that will help you discover amazing new music. We're here to walk you through these auto playlist makers.
Spotify recently launched a new feature:Every Monday morning, the company brings you a new Discover Weekly playlist This is a collection of about 30 tracks that Spotify thinks you'll want to listen to.
Every Spotify user has a flavor profile; It's Spotify's way of quantifying what kind of music you like. Every time you listen to a song, try a new artist, skip a song, listen to a song on repeat, or do anything else while using the service, Spotify adds the information to your profile.
Spotify takes this information and, by comparing it to other similar profiles, determines what music you haven't listened to, or at least haven't listened to in a while, so you might be interested in listening to it. Some tracks come from artists you may not have heard of before, while others are lesser-known tracks from your favorites.
As I mentioned earlier, I am a heavy user of Spotify. Why Taylor Swift is wrong about Spotify Why Taylor Swift is wrong about Spotify In the past week, Taylor Swift has pulled her music from Spotify, inspired countless song-laden headlines, and reignited the debate over music streaming services. Read More I have been using Discover Weekly for several weeks now and have been very impressed so far. I've loved all the one or two songs on each playlist (much less than expected). I've discovered new artists, reassessed my opinion of previously dismissed ones, and have been reminded of some great tracks I haven't heard in years.
You can listen to one of the playlists that Spotify created for me below.
You don't need to do anything special to check out your own Discover Weekly playlist. As long as you've used Spotify long enough to get an idea of what you like, your playlist is automatically added to your music collection. Every Monday it is updated with a new set of tracks for you to listen to.
In recent years, music has become much more international. The main tracks in the United States and Ireland are often almost the same. But as Spotify points out on their blog:
Using some basic statistical modelling, Spotify has created individual playlists for nearly 1,000 cities around the world that feature the music that is most distinctive to them. These are the artists who are disproportionately listened to in those places.
For example, my hometown Dublin playlist has a lot of great local bands - Le Galaxie, Ham Sandwich and Coronas all appear more than once. All of these bands regularly reach the Irish Top 10, even if they are not as popular as someone like Taylor Swift.
Once again, Spotify nails it. If you'd like to hear the bands that regularly play gigs in Dublin and headline small Irish festivals, then the Dublin Music Map is quite interesting. You can search for your city or see the complete Music Map here.
Spotify has a lot of deep data about which artists are similar to, inspired by, or related to each other. One of the clever ways they've been using is creating a musical time machine. Taste Rewind is a fun tool that analyzes your music collection and turns back the clock. Takes your current taste in music and brings it back to the 00s, 90s, 80s and more.
To get started, visit the Taste Rewind site and sign in with your Spotify account. You will be asked to select three artists from a small collection drawn from your music history. I was offered Scooter, Feeder, Afrojack, Dashboard Confessional, and Fall Out Boy, along with many others. Once you select your three favorites, Spotify will generate a unique playlist for each decade based on those selections. Here's my 80's playlist:
Another tool that uses Spotify's artist data is Spot . Sweet Spot is the Valentine's Day name change of an earlier tool, Boil the Frog, which I personally loved.
What it does is take two artists and create a playlist that links them through related artists. Basically, it calculates the musical equivalent of Kevin Bacon's Six Degrees. Learn about the 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' game before you play it online. Game of 'Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon' before playing it online Read more. Some very different artists require 15 or even more steps to connect, while the most similar musicians will only need three or four steps.
This was launched before Valentine's Day with the idea being that you and your significant other each pick an artist, with Spotify joining them on the music drive. Singletons needn't despair though, as Sweet Spot is just as much fun for you.
It's amazing how easily very different artists like Blink-182 and The Beatles can be connected through 13 other artists. Neither transition is so obvious:the flicker leads to the Unwritten Law, which leads to the Lit, while at the other end, The Kinks connects to The Beatles.
Go create your own, or listen to my Blink-to-Beatles playlist for yourself:
Playlists may not be as necessary as Spotify Your Music Collection:The End Of iTunes used to be. Spotify Your Music Collection:The End Of iTunes. Spotify is no longer content to compete with radio, they now compete with the idea of even owning music. Read More
With Spotify, you can get playlists curated by other users. Be My Valentine - 10 Love Spotify Playlists Be My Valentine - 10 Love Spotify Playlists Valentine's Day is here, as it is every February 14th. Some people don't. Recognize this particular celebration of all things loving and romantic, whether it's because of your religious beliefs, country... Read More I, for one, am a big fan of automated tools; I love checking out 30 new songs every Monday morning with my Discover Weekly playlist, exploring new cities, or messing around with Taste Rewind and Sweet Spot.
How do you make playlists? Have you found your Discover Weekly playlists useful and entertaining? We want to hear all about your experiences, so let us know in the comments section below.
