Discovery, visuals, and imagery are about to get more prevalent on Spotify.
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You listen to music, play a podcast episode, open a playlist, and more, that is pretty much Spotify to most. But over the years, the music streaming company has made it known that they want to go above and beyond just music. And with their recent Stream On event, the company revealed their biggest updates to the app and service to date. The Spotify experience is going to get a big facelift real soon with a renewed focus on discovery, video, and a lot more. So, here’s what you need to know about the updates coming to the service’s 500 million monthly users.
NEW HOMEPAGE LAYOUT
The highlight of Spotify’s new reveals is the homepage is getting a major facelift. Currently, the home tab is a finite scroll that shows the songs, podcasts, albums, and artists you listen to and gives artist and playlist recommendations. But moving forward, the homepage is becoming a scrollable vertical reel ala TikTok’s FYP.
Now, the page is getting more visual as it will include clips and videos of artists, albums, podcasts, and more that Spotify will recommend to you as you scroll down. Clicking on a video or post will then bring you to a page dedicated to it. Gone are the days of just static imagery on the homepage. This feed-like experience is set to make the homepage feel livelier.
SMARTER ALGORITHM
Spotify’s algorithm may either be a boon or a blessing. But regardless of how you see it, it’s about to be implemented more into the user experience. Aside from curating the homepage, it will also be part of the new Smart Shuffle feature. If activated by the user, this feature will let Spotify temporarily add new and previously unknown songs it determines to be fitting for the selected playlist. For those who have made playlists on Spotify before, this feature is similar to the one where Spotify shows recommended songs at the bottom of the playlist.
But with Smart Shuffle, it will make for a more seamless and organic experience to breathe new life into the playlist for the weeks and months to come. Another new feature you may have already heard of is AI DJ, a tool currently in limited release in the US and Canada. It basically serves as your personal DJ who queues songs based on your listening habits all while providing commentary of its own. Finally, autoplay for podcasts is coming so no longer will you have you manually play the next episode.
FOR ARTISTS
It wasn’t just users who got major changes to their experience. So too were musicians and artists. For one, Marquees, which are full-screen sponsored recommendations by artists to fans, will be implemented more. Discovery Mode, a tool to help artists promote their music, will become more widely available to musicians. There will also be an increased priority in concert and merch discovery for artists and their fans.
Taking a page out of Instagram and YouTube, Spotify will now allow artists to post 30-second clips and visuals onto their profile page. It can be anything from talking about a new song, an upcoming release, or anything in between. This feature technically isn’t new as superstars like Taylor Swift had access to posting video snippets. But this time, it will be rolled out to a wider audience.
And in a nice development, the much-requested feature of a pre-save button has finally been added to Spotify. It will be included in the new Countdown Page, a landing page to hype up an artist’s impending release which will include a countdown clock. So, the next time your fave has a new release coming, watch out for that Countdown Page.
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