Discover Weekly by Spotify curates a dynamic playlist based on your musical tastes

You may have noticed something different about your Spotify interface recently. If you haven’t, go back and check. You should find a new playlist you didn’t put together yourself. For a moment I thought I was having too much fun this weekend and forgot I created this, as most of the tunes seem rather familiar. After digging a bit, I found out it was a new feature from Spotify, and it’s a pretty fun one! The music streaming service calls it Discover Weekly, and it more or less does what its name entails.

Discover Weekly by Spotify creates a playlist consisting of about 2 hours of music. However, this is not music you listen to often, or that is included in your current playlists. Instead, the service takes your listening habits and helps you discover songs it deems similar to your specific musical tastes.

I have been listening to my curated playlist and realize many of these songs I actually know, but I never added to my playlists. The few I had no idea about also seemed pleasant, so the software Spotify is using to pick these songs seems to work very nicely. Most of my playlist is in Spanish, but I assume that’s related to the fact I went through one of my Hispanic music phases last week. Let’s see what next week’s list looks like!

By the way, your Discover Weekly playlist should be updated every Monday. The beginning of your work week should no longer be as stressful, and you will always have a fresh list of music that you are likely to enjoy.

Discover Weekly compared to main competitors

Google Play Music: While we are huge fans of Google Play Music around here, we can’t really say it’s the best for discovering music. The Search Giant’s streaming service does offer recommendations that are personalized, but they simply aren’t as well-organized as Spotify’s. You have to manually tell Google what you like, then the service gives you a collage of tiles with suggestions (some based on what you have been listening, as well). You can also listen to music curated for specific environments (happy hour, after work, etc), but those are not exactly made for you, either.

Pandora: One could say Pandora is pretty much a music-discovering service by nature. After all, it is all about finding music that is similar to what you already like. The only issue is Pandora is random all the time. You can’t exactly pick and choose your songs.

Songza: Songza is all about the curated playlists, so if any of these Android services will compete with Spotify it has to be this one. Sadly, these are not really personalized, but you can always find a plethora of lists with hand-picked music for all tastes and situations. The library is pretty ample and I happen to enjoy Songza when I am feeling a bit more random.

Apple Music: We know some of you will hate seeing this category here, but Apple Music is, after all, one of Spotify’s biggest competitors. And considering it is expected to come to Android at some point, I thought it was important to include. The truth is Apple Music could have been one of the main reasons why Spotify is trying to expand its discovering features and curated content.

Apple’s new streaming service is huge on playlists curated by actual persons. Adding that human element seems to be working very well for Apple Music, as all of the recommendations and playlists I have seen during my testing are spot on. To be honest (please don’t hate me), if I personally had to pick my favorite curated playlists, my choice would be between Spotify and Apple Music.

What is your Discover Weekly playlist like?

I showed you part of my Discover Weekly playlist above, and told you a bit about it. Now it’s your turn! Go ahead and hit the comments and let us know how pleased you are with Spotify’s suggestions. Are they as accurate as mine? Are you liking the mechanics of this new service so far?