Spotify is introducing a new feature called 'Daily Mix," a series of playlists containing a smorgasbord of your personal favorites alongside tracks that Spotify thinks will meld well with your musical preferences.
"With Daily Mix, you will tune into a mix of the music you know and love, made fresh in continuously updated playlists," explains Spotify.
Daily Mix, unlike Spotify's "Discover Weekly" music recommendations, updates on a daily basis. Spotify will occasionally refresh the tracks inside the Daily Mix, swapping out a playlist for another one for up to six mixes max or lower, contingent on your listening habits and the range of your musical taste.
"Daily Mix is trying to take the work out of hitting a button and always hearing music that you love," Matt Ogle, senior product owner of Spotify, said. Ogle is responsible for developing music personalization features on Spotify specifically Discover Weekly, saving users the cumbersome chore of combing through Spotify's gargantuan library to find new music.
"In a lot of ways [Daily Mix is] the opposite of Discover Weekly," he said, explaining that Daily Mix is an assurance that Spotify will find new music for you, and by measure of your preferred genres and artists, chances are you're bound to like its recommendations.
Discover Weekly, while universally praised, has a few drawbacks. At most, the tracks add up to just over two hours of new music for you to listen to, and the selected tracks remain there until the following week. Daily Mix, as described by Spotify, is a collection of songs that add up to a near-endless playback, letting you have a worry-free listening experience.
Spotify will get better at its recommendation algorithm as you continue listening to more music. There are also options to ban or heart certain songs, all the more helpful for Spotify to shave off songs and narrow down recommendations, basing on your liked and disliked tracks.
Playlists have become more prominent in the music streaming age. In a survey of 500 music streaming listeners, 90% admitted to creating playlists either for themselves or for other people to listen to. Spotify is seemingly attempting to outwit Pandora, another music streaming service, by adding more depth to its music personalization aspect. In comparison, Pandora does not let users choose music to listen to but rather lets them create a "radio station" consisting of their preferred genres, artists and tunes. Pandora is powered by the Music Genome Project, an unrivaled algorithm that delivers.
Daily mixes are now available for both Android and iOS, with support for other platforms coming soon. The feature is available even for users who don't have a premium subscription. Keep in mind that, if you're a Spotify newbie, a required two-week listening period is needed for Spotify to cherrypick recommendations for you accordingly.
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