The Killer Feature Spotify is Missing
How social radio would combine the best of human and algorithmic curation
Surely you’ve heard of Spotify’s Discover Weekly feature. It’s kind-of a big deal. It’s answered the internet-age-old question of whether humans or algorithms are better at music curation by saying, well, neither and both.
Discover Weekly works by looking at the songs you’ve saved to favorites or added to playlists and comparing those to the larger Spotify community’s listening patterns for those songs. Let’s say you added Roses by The Chainsmokers to a playlist (hypothetically). Spotify goes out and checks playlists that other users have added Roses to and finds songs from those playlists that you haven’t listened to, or at least haven’t saved to your favorites. Discover Weekly is a collection of those songs. (For a much better explanation of how it works, check this out)
I listen to my Discover Weekly playlist every Monday. Although I continue to look forward to it, it’s lost its luster for me. It’s so down tempo! Generally sweet sounding but sometimes sad. Despite what people might say, I promise you, my reader-friend, that I am neither down tempo nor sad, generally, and I often listen to up beat music, like Roses, or this great Bebop playlist I listened to top-to-bottom at work today. Alas, my Discover Weekly playlist is in a rut.
I think I know why: it’s probably a result of the folksy playlists I have in my account. On average, that’s how my listening skews. But it’s unfortunate that the 40% of my listening that’s outside of that genre isn’t represented in Discover Weekly.
This problem isn’t unique to me. As I’ve chatted with friends about their experiences with Discover Weekly, the experience has been consistent: there’s something magical here, but it can be hit or miss. And you know what, I think that’s ok. If everything’s a hit, you’re not being pushed enough. If anything, I’d like to see Spotify push outside of genres I listen to more often. That’s where real discovery comes from.
And that’s where the killer feature comes from too. Other than Spotify, where do you go to discover great music? Your friends, right? I know which friends I can go to for reliably good music recommendations. Their tastes overlap with mine, but are centered in a different space. Their 60% listening tastes aren’t the same as mine.
Spotify should build a social radio station.
No more 102.5FM, no more Justin Bieber radio. I want to listen to my friend Julia’s station. In fact, I already do: I follow her Discover Weekly station. It’s fantastic — way more upbeat than my own; more electronic; sufficiently different from my own but close enough to find something I like.
Right now, this is hard to do. I have to ask Julia to make her playlist public, then follow it, then keep track of it amongst my playlists. You can’t even rename the playlist in your own library.
There’s too much friction here. I should be able to browse my friends’ Discover Weekly playlists. There are gems hidden there, but I can’t get to them without asking permission first. I expect privacy concerns have held Spotify back, and I can understand that. So let users opt out, just like they did with their Friend Feed.
Imagine a world where the recommendations Spotify has generated for your music-savant friend, the one who always recommends the songs you love, are available every Monday. Imagine being able to peak in on the recommendations for that quirky-but-interesting friend who you’d expect to have quirky-but-interesting tastes in music. Imagine flipping through friend stations like you used to flip through radio stations. It’s the very best of human and algorithmic curation. It’s a world where great new music is easier than ever to find. Sounds like a world I’d like to live in.
Did you read this far? Thank you! Here’s something else I wrote on Spotify you might find interesting:
