For a while now, I’ve had this very specific problem: I listen to a lot of music but dislike making playlists. I’ve used Spotify’s mixes and radio features to try and get the kind of curation I want. The real problem is that they always seem to fall short in more ways than one. On Sept. 12, 2023, Spotify released daylist, a new form of playlist that Spotify curates for you multiple times a day. Could this have solved my problem?
In early February of this year, Spotify released a new feature called DJ. The concept is simple: Based on your listening habits, AI will formulate together groups of songs that are similar, changing the vibe every five songs or so.
This new feature really had me excited. However, I found myself skipping through most of the songs it brought up for me. As I started to use the feature over the next two months, it didn’t seem to improve for me, feeding me stuff I had no interest in.
This led me to switch back to my normal listening habits and hope for a better curation feature in the future. That brings us to now. Daylist updates at different times throughout the day to keep what you’re listening to fresh. From the short time I’ve had the feature, I can say that the way it combines genres into an easy-flowing playlist has impressed me.
When you go into the new playlist, right next to the length of the playlist, it has a countdown to the next update. This is a very welcome inclusion to the feature.
Even though there’s a lot of good within daylist, it still leaves stuff to be desired. Currently, my biggest problem with it is that you can’t change the genres you’re given. That’s all decided for you by Spotify. The ability to decide what kind of genres are included in your daylist would’ve been a nice customization feature for those who would really like to fine-tune what is curated for them.
So, what does daylist and features like it mean for the future of music streaming as a whole? I believe as we move towards more AI curation methods, we’ll start to see similar services moving into the space in their own ways as well.
As for Spotify and its future with intelligent curation, I have a lot of hope. Within seven months, we’ve seen the release of two new curation options that have the potential to change the way that you consume music. If you haven’t already tried daylist, I would recommend giving it a shot and seeing if it works for you.
