Spotify announced for the first time Wednesday that it will give users more control over the streaming service’s algorithms. At least that’s how the company plans to launch its new ‘Promoted Playlists’, a feature that will be available to premium subscribers in New Zealand first.
Spotify says the feature, currently only available in English, is still in beta and will evolve before rolling out to other markets.
The company says the new tool allows users to write what they want to hear into a personalized playlist that reflects the “complete arc” of their tastes. That means this playlist focuses on your entire Spotify listening history from day one, not just the songs you currently like. The company says this is what distinguishes this feature from other playlists.
The feature is an evolution from Spotify’s existing AI playlist option, which debuted last year, and also works through written prompts. Similar to AI playlists, new prompt playlists allow users to request what they want to hear with written instructions. However, you can now create longer prompts with more specific instructions. That’s because the new AI feature takes into account the world’s knowledge, a Spotify representative explained to TechCrunch.
Additionally, the ability to go further back in your listening history and schedule how often your playlists are updated is what sets it apart from Spotify’s other AI playlist products.
Spotify, for example, is proposing that subscribers can use a new feature to request things like “music from top artists from the past five years,” and then modify the prompt to include requests for “deep cuts you haven’t heard yet.”
Spotify says that another example of a longer prompt is that you can request “high-energy pop and hip-hop for a 30-minute 5K run at a steady pace before breaking into a relaxing song to cool down,” or “music from the year’s biggest movies or most talked-about TV shows that suits my tastes.”
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Additionally, you can further fine-tune your prompts to make them even more specific, and you can even set how often they update, such as daily or weekly. The idea is that users can essentially create their own version of something like Spotify’s flagship playlist, Discover Weekly, but focused on the type of music, genre, or time period they want to track, or something like Spotify’s genre-focused Daily Mix.
The company says playlists include descriptions and context so you know why they’re recommended. It also provides a series of prompts to help users get started.
Spotify isn’t the only social app touting ways to give users control over the algorithm. Instagram also introduced a new feature today that allows users to control the types of Reels they see. Bluesky, a competitor of Decentralized X, also allows users to swap out their algorithms for their own.
