Spotify's personalized playlists add variety to your music diet
If you’re tired of listening to the same old songs and albums, Spotify’s personalized playlists can add a welcome splash of variety.
Spotify is continually adding to its roster of auto-generated playlists and it can be hard to keep up with them, especially on the desktop app, which doesn’t make them easy to find. (Hint: open the Search menu and open the Made For You section.)
Here, then, are my five favorite Spotify personalized playlists, and a bonus sixth entry that the service has only just released and so it’s too early to tell if it’s any good or not!
Note, some of these playlists may only be available to Premium subscribers.
1. Release Radar
If you really want to inject fresh sounds into your speakers, Release Radar is an excellent way to do it. Release Radar is a mixlist of new music from artists you’ve followed or listened to in the past, which is refreshed every Friday.
To be clear, this won’t always be songs you’ve never heard before. Top of my Release Radar this week is a live version of The Chain by Fleetwood Mac, because there’s a new Rumours Live album out. Still, it’s a great way to keep across both completely fresh tunes and new versions of your old favorites.
2. Daily Drive
A great playlist for those on the morning commute to work, Daily Drive is a blend of news reports and music. Here in the U.K., the audio news is provided by respected sources such as The FT, The Times and Tortoise, but sources are chosen from your region.
If I have one criticism of this list, it’s that the music choices are on the safe side, laregly relying on hits from your most listened-to artists rather than delivering something fresh for the morning.
3. On Record
On Record is a great way to learn more about the artists you regularly listen to. Like Daily Drive, it intersperses music with spoken-word podcasts. For example, my current On Record playlist includes U2’s In A Little While followed by an episode of the Song Exploder podcast, where artists explain how they wrote a particular song, in this case U2’s Cedarwood Road. It’s a clever combination of the different types of audio content on Spotify.
4. Daily Mixes
Spotify offers premium customers up to six Daily Mixes based on their different musical tastes. The mixes are loosely grouped by genre. My current Daily Mix 4 is full of 1990’s indie bands, for example, while Daily Mix 3 is focused on older bands such as The Beatles and The Kinks.
As your music tastes change, so do the Daily Mixes on offer. And, of course, each list is updated every day. With around three hours of tracks in each of those lists, you certainly won’t run dry of music.
5. DJ
DJ is Spotify’s AI-generated host, called “X”, who pops up every three tracks to give you a few seconds of chat. That might be a bit of trivia or news about some of your favorite artists (“Suede are back on tour this month...”) or just an intro to the next batch of songs, which are normally themed.
My initial reaction to DJ was “why would anyone listen to an AI blathering on between the music” but it’s just brief enough not to become irritating, and I like the way it pings between different genres. “Hey, Barry. Here’s some music you were listening to back in 2016.” Oh, go on then...
Bonus New Entry: Daylist
Do you often listen to 90s dance music to get you in the mood for going out on a Friday night? Or kick back with some classical of a Sunday morning?
The new Daylist looks for trends in your past listening behavior and then delivers the type of music you normally listen to at that time of day. It’s just offered me a playlist of live performances, because that’s what I’ve listened to on previous Wednesday afternoons. News to me, but I’m enjoying a blast of David Bowie from Live Aid nonetheless!
