As part of the Stream On event held in Los Angeles this week, music service Spotify presented an updated design of its application to the general public. In addition to a redesigned user interface and support for short, vertical TikTok-style videos, the developers announced a vertically scrolling music feed, a Smart Shuffle mode with playlist recommendations, a podcast autoplay tool and more.
Image source: Spotify
The basis of the new design was an interface update released in August last year, in which the developers separated music and podcasts into separate feeds. Tapping Music, Podcasts & Shows or Audiobooks at the top of the home screen now opens a TikTok-style vertically scrolling map feed. The music feed will still show links to recommended playlists and mixes.
One of the recent innovations of the service called AI DJ analyzes the content that the user is listening to and uses special algorithms to make recommendations based on preferences and provide additional information about artists and tracks. For now, the AI DJ is only available to Spotify Premium subscribers in the US and Canada, but the developers plan to roll it out to other markets at a later date.
When scrolling through the music feed, users are presented with short looped canvas clips based on artist clips. This approach has allowed the developers to create a TikTok-like user interface, which could prove beneficial. Enthusiasts recently discovered a videotape of short vertical clips on Spotify, which is now available to a small circle of insiders.
A similar approach is followed for viewing the podcast feed. As with the music feed, users can scroll the podcast feed vertically. The audiobook feed will be similar. This orientation is new for the company, but there are already over 300,000 audio books on the platform. The algorithms behind each of the feeds rank the suggested content based on each user’s tastes and preferences.
The Spotify app is also getting other updates, including a Smart Shuffle option that adds recommended tracks as the playlist plays. Artists can also create a new album countdown page.
The updated Spotify will initially only be available on mobile devices, but will also appear on other platforms in the future. The new version will be rolled out in waves to the company’s more than 500 million monthly active users. In this way Spotify has confirmed that its audience has surpassed half a billion users, as expected.
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