While record companies continue to be critical of Spotify’s free tier and how it affects record sales, the popular music streaming app is now adding even more features that free users can enjoy. This is their first major announcement since they went public earlier this month and this will, of course, please their over 90 million free users. One of the previously premium-only features they will now be able to access are personalized discovery playlists and it’s on-demand and not just shuffle.
If you’ve been a subscriber since the beginning, it’s easy to forget that you enjoy a lot of features that you probably take for granted. But what remains for those on the free tier is that they will still have to endure the ad interruptions since they’re of course on an ad-supported platform. But now they can also enjoy fifteen new on-demand playlists that have been specially curated and you won’t have to skip or wait for the shuffle to listen to the song you want to. This includes things like RapCaviar, Viva Latino, and also Discover Weekly, Daily Mix, and Release Radar, which are more personalized.
Spotify also promises better personalization for free users. They’ll deliver curated playlists based on artists and genres that you like, specifically in the Daily Mix that groups together the different kinds of music that you love. You can also Like (or heart) the songs and they’ll be saved in your Favorites playlist. Then if you don’t like the song, just tap on the ⃠ icon and it will hide them and the algorithm will note you don’t like those kinds of songs. You can also now choose to use less data when playing music so you can save up if you’re dealing with limited data.
Spotify is, of course, doing this so that free users will be all the more convinced to go and sign up for the premium tier. They believe this technique, offering something for free at first, will work just as it did for the music industry in the 90s. They will have to convince record companies though that this will work by showing them numbers which will hopefully be good.
SOURCE: Spotify
