We know Spotify playlisting is important to you and that you have a ton of questions around the song pitching process, what goes on behind the scenes, and general best practices. And we want to make sure to get you the answers. To that end we recently reached out to our followers on Instagram, asking you what you want to know. We then sent a selection off to some of our playlist editors to get you the answers straight from the source.
All artists have equal opportunities to pitch their music via our playlist pitching tool within Spotify for Artists and we consider all artists for playlisting. Many of our playlists support a wide variety of artists, regardless of whether they are signed or unsigned. In addition, we also have playlists, such as Fresh Finds, specifically aimed at supporting unsigned artists.
Absolutely. Music speaks to us in more ways than numbers. We put listening first. And, we also look at what is happening in culture, artists pushing the boundaries, and always consider a myriad of music characteristics when curating (from bpm and tempo to song structure and key signature). For instance for Juneteenth our regular New Music Friday playlist was made up of entirely Black artists and we feature local artists in our New York City playlists.
We always try and tag when a song is explicit within a playlist. There are also some playlists and audiences where we won't include explicit tracks such as the Coffee Shop Vibes playlist, such as in our Spotify Kids programming, and so forth.
Each of our editors are unique and work differently, but they all constantly seek inspiration from different music publications and cultural moments as well as what artists are highlighting on their own artist pages and playlists.
All of the solutions using intents seem broken or old, spotify's web api only allows adding a specific song to a queue and runs into issues if there's not already a song playing, and there seems to be very little else I can find.
Didn't have a chance to have someone else log in to my account, but completely wiping Spotify off my phone and reinstalling it seemed to do the trick. I'll reply again if the problem comes back after finishing the download of the playlist
I did want to add my two cents into this a year later. If this is occuring to you and the fix in this post isnt working for you, there is a new Shuffle mode. You can now Shuffle your Likes normally or theres a new mode called Smart Shuffle that essentially shuffles and "enhances" your playlists. Tap Shuffle icon once for normal shuffle, tap again for enhanced shuffle (see pictures attached to see how each mode looks).
It took me FOREVER to figure this out and its hard to tell which mode is on. Reading this post somehow helped me even though, the solution was different.
A great way to embed a Spotify playlist is by taking a screenshot of the playlist and then adding it as an image to your email. You can hyperlink the image to the playlist URL so your recipients can access the playlist directly.
Spotify offers digital copyright restricted recorded audio content, including more than 100 million songs and five million podcasts, from record labels and media companies.[8] As a freemium service, basic features are free with advertisements and limited control, while additional features, such as offline listening and commercial-free listening, are offered via paid subscriptions. Users can search for music based on artist, album, or genre, and can create, edit, and share playlists.
In March 2017, Spotify acquired Sonalytic, an audio detection startup, for an undisclosed amount of money. Spotify stated that Sonalytic would be used to improve the company's personalized playlists, better match songs with compositions, and improve the company's publishing data system.[73] Later that month, Spotify also acquired MightyTV, an app connected to television streaming services, including Netflix and HBO Go, that recommends content to users. Spotify intended to use MightyTV to improve its advertising efforts on the free tier of service.[74] In April 2017, they acquired Mediachain, a blockchain startup that had been developing a decentralized database system for managing attribution, and other metadata for media.[75][76] This was followed in May 2017 with the acquisition of artificial intelligence startup Niland, which uses technology to improve personalisation and recommendation features for users.[77][78] In November 2017, Spotify acquired Soundtrap, an online music studio startup.[79][80]
In January 2015, Sony announced PlayStation Music, a new music service with Spotify as its exclusive partner. PlayStation Music incorporates the Spotify service into Sony's PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 gaming consoles, and Sony Xperia mobile devices. The service launched on 30 March 2015.[112] In March 2017, Spotify announced a partnership with the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference for 2017, presenting specific content in special playlists through an SXSW hub in Spotify's apps. The integration also enabled Spotify within the SXSW GO app to help users discover and explore artists performing at the conference. Two more partnerships were announced in March; one with WNYC Studios, and one with Waze. The WNYC Studios partnership brought various podcasts from WNYC to Spotify, including Note To Self, On the Media and Here's the Thing. Spotify also announced that the third season of WNYC Studios' 2 Dope Queens podcast would premiere with a two-week exclusivity period on the service on 21 March 2017.[113] The Waze partnership allows Waze app users to view directions to destinations within the Spotify app and access their Spotify playlists through the Waze app.[114]
In May 2016, Spotify announced "Sponsored Playlists", a monetisation opportunity in which brands can specify the audiences they have in mind, with Spotify matching the marketer with suitable music in a playlist.[169][170] That September, Spotify announced that it had paid a total of over $5 billion to the music industry. In June 2017, as part of renegotiated licenses with Universal Music Group and Merlin Network, Spotify's financial filings revealed its agreement to pay more than $2 billion (equivalent to $2,360,000,000 in 2022) in minimum payments over the next two years.[171][172][173]
In June 2017, Variety reported that Spotify would announce "Secret Genius", a new initiative aimed at highlighting songwriters and producers, and the effect those people have on the music industry and the artists' careers. The project, which would feature awards, "Songshops" songwriting workshops, curated playlists, and podcasts, is an effort to "shine a light on these people behind the scenes who play such a big role in some of the most important moments of our lives. When the general public hears a song, they automatically associate it with the artist who sings it, not the people behind the scenes who make it happen, so we thought the title Secret Genius was appropriate", Spotify's former Global Head of Creator Services Troy Carter told Variety the first awards ceremony would take place in late 2017,[needs update] and was intended to honour "the top songwriters, producers and publishers in the industry as well as up-and-coming talent". Additionally, as part of "The Ambassador Program", 13 songwriters would each host a Songshop workshop, in which their peers would collaboratively attempt to create a hit song, with the first workshop taking place in Los Angeles in June 2017.[187]
In October 2017, Spotify launched "Rise", a program aimed at promoting emerging artists.[188][189] In February 2020, Spotify announced it would be featuring new songwriter pages and 'written by' playlists. This was aimed at giving fans a behind the scenes look at the process of some of their favorite songwriters. Initial pages added included Justin Trantor, Meghan Trainor, and Missy Elliott. Spotify thereafter announced it was planning to add more of these pages and playlists to highlight songwriters.[190][191]
On 31 January 2018, Spotify started testing a new Pandora-styled standalone app called Stations by Spotify for Australian Android users.[195] It featured 62 music channels, each devoted to a particular genre. Spotify itself has two channels named after its playlists that link directly to the users' profile: "Release Radar" and "Discover Weekly". The aim was to help users to listen to the music they want without information overload or spending time building their own playlists. At launch, the skipping feature was not featured to "reinforce the feel of radio", but it was quietly added later and with no limits. Songs can be "loved" but cannot be "hated". If a song is "loved", a custom radio channel will be created based on it, and when there are at least 15 of these songs, a "My Favourites" channel is unlocked.
Spotify has client software currently available for Windows, macOS, Wear OS, Android, iOS, watchOS, iPadOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S game consoles. There is an official, although unsupported Linux version. Spotify also offers a proprietary protocol known as "Spotify Connect", which lets users listen to music through a wide range of entertainment systems, including speakers, receivers, TVs, cars, and smartwatches. Spotify also has a web player (open.spotify.com).[204] Offline Music listening is possible on watchOS[205] and more recently added to google's WearOS[206] for those with premium subscriptions. Unlike the apps, the web player does not have the ability to download music for offline listening. In June 2017, Spotify became available as an app through Windows Store.[207][208]
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