Spotify is rolling out Prompted Playlists, a new AI playlist creation tool, to premium subscribers in the US and Canada. The feature was originally tested in New Zealand and allows users to create playlists by describing in their own words what they want to hear.
Prompted Playlists builds on an earlier AI playlist product that launched in 2024, which allowed for simpler prompts like “Instrumental electronica to help you stay focused on work,” or “Fun, upbeat, positive songs to lift your mood.”
Instead, the new prompt playlist feature allows users to explain what they want to hear in more detail in a conversational mode.
For example, in a press demo, Spotify showed off a playlist built around a long prompt: “Find an artist you haven’t heard but might like, or have only heard one or two songs, and introduce them to me. Create a playlist of songs that gives you an overview of their catalog so you feel like you know them. Put the songs you think I like best in the top five.”
JJ Italiano, Spotify’s head of global music curation and discovery, explains that the idea behind this new feature is to allow anyone to create playlists, even if they don’t know much about curation of music or the right words to use.
“For most people, it’s not part of their job. They don’t always have the time or energy to keep creating the perfect playlist every time the mood strikes. That’s where prompted playlists come in,” said Italiano, whose team creates popular Spotify playlists like “Today’s Top Hits,” “New Music Friday,” and “Rap Caviar.” “This allows listeners to access that creative process without knowing the genre, era, or jargon. They don’t need the right words. They just need their own words.”
“If you can describe the emotion, you can create a playlist,” he added.
Spotify says the AI behind the feature analyzes the world of music, including “trends, charts, culture, and history,” as well as a user’s entire listening history since joining the service, in real time.
Playlists are personalized by default to the creator, but users can also use this tool to break out of their normal listening habits and get different recommendations. This means you can specifically tell the AI not to use your own listening history as a reference point, or you can tell the AI to introduce you to songs it’s never heard before, like in the example above.
Prompts also don’t need to include musical terms. For example, users can request playlists based on the weather or their favorite TV shows.
Because prompts can be shared, this feature also has the potential to create a new type of creator, one who creates AI prompts that others will want to try. Although the prompt itself is the same, it is customized to each user’s preferences and viewing history, so the resulting playlist will be different for each user. You can then make further changes to that playlist if you wish.
Spotify says Prompted Playlists are the “next evolution” of its previous AI playlist feature. The new version is even more tuned to real-time music trends and culture, giving you deeper control and a holistic understanding of your listening behavior, not just what you’ve listened to recently. However, the old AI playlist feature will not be retired. Instead, the two products will be used in parallel, which could lead to consumer confusion given their similarities.
Since this feature is still in beta, there are some usage restrictions in place and may change over time. Additionally, it is only available in English for the time being.
The company could not say when Prompted Playlists would reach subscribers around the world, saying it wants to learn from these early markets first to inform future releases.
