After seeing success with its Discovery Weekly feature, Spotify announced on Wednesday the launch of yet another feature that will further help users find new music.
Discovery Weekly is the music streaming service's personalized playlist feature that provides users with 2 hours worth of music recommendations based on their preferences every week. The new feature expands on this idea, but instead highlights fresh tracks weekly each Wednesday.
Called Fresh Finds, this feature was actually first introduced back in July. Fresh Finds consists of an overall playlist that serves as a 2-hour mix that includes brand-new breakout tracks in every genre. However, starting today, users will be able to listen to five new playlists categorized by genre. These include: Fire Emoji (hip-hop), Basement (electronic), Hiptronix (vocal pop), Six Strings (guitar driven) and Cyclone (experimental).
What's interesting about this new music discovery tool is the way Spotify finds which tracks to include. Songs that are added to Fresh Finds playlists are selected based off recommendations by both users and machine.
We already know that streaming platforms rely on algorithms to find the artist and songs users will enjoy based on their likes and listening history. However, Spotify's Fresh Find also uses data from music blogs and music review sites to find the most buzzed about new artists that will be added to the playlists.
To further find fresh tracks for the playlist — and to keep its listeners up on what could be the next big trending artist — Spotify also is using listening patterns from a focus group of about 50,000 of its users it calls "music trendsetters."
"Spotify has always focused on artists and listeners, and with Fresh Finds we're specifically looking at new creators, digging deeper to understand how undiscovered artists can attract a huge fan base," Dr. Brian Whitman, principal scientist at Spotify, said in a statement. "By analyzing the listening behavior of our top tastemaker users, we're able to predict new breakout artists and filter their hits-to-be into playlists with the most promising new music out there."
And this discovery tool has even helped artists. Spotify revealed that five of the artists performing at the 2016 SXSW Spotify House include those who had their music on Fresh Finds, including Totem, Kacy Hill, D.R.A.M, Muna and Anderson .Paak.
The Fresh Finds playlists are located within the Browse section, with the five new playlists now available. New music will be added to these playlists each Wednesday, so users should make sure to save any new songs they like before the weekly refresh.
Source: Spotify
