Spotify to Offer Personalised Editorial Playlists Based on the Listener’s Interests

Spotify is now looking to personalise playlists based on the listener's interest and browsing history. The streaming service has announced that it looks to algorithmically personalise human-curated playlists, so that "music has a better chance of getting into the ears of the right listeners." The company has been testing this personalised editorial playlist since a while now, and it claims that the number of listeners who then seek out the track on their own for repeat listens is up by 80 percent, and the average number of times a listener saves a track is up 66 percent.

Earlier, Spotify had thousands of playlists curated by its editors, and the same playlist used to be heard by all users of the app. Moving forward, Spotify will personalise some playlists for each listener based on their particular taste. This means that for those specific playlists, no two listening experiences will be the same. The company says that it has been testing the new personalised editorial playlists system since a while now, and it has found that listeners have started to listen to music via Spotify for a longer duration. Furthermore, these personalised editorial playlists increase the number of artists featured on playlists by 30 percent and the number of songs listeners are discovering have increased by 35 percent.

Spotify also notes, “When a song is added to one of these playlists, it won't necessarily appear on every listener's personalised version of that playlist. That's why, starting today, we'll create unique links to these playlists for artists to share via Spotify for Artists and Spotify Analytics. Anyone who clicks a unique link shared by an artist will see a personalized version of the playlist with that artist's track as the first song. (For editorial playlists that are not personalised, artists should continue to use public links as they do now.) When songs get added to one of these playlists, an email notification gets sent to artists and their teams, so they can share the good news with fans.”

To recall, Spotify was launched in India in February, and it stepped into a price-sensitive market crowded by well-funded players such as Reliance Industries' JioSaavn and Apple's Apple Music. A week later, the company said it racked up more than 1 million unique users in India across its free and premium tiers. Spotify Premium India subscription price is Rs. 119 per month and Rs. 1,189 per year. It is offering a student discount in India as well and the price for students is Rs. 59 per month (monthly subscription) or Rs. 66 for a one-month top-up.