Spotify Discovers Music Discovery With Discover! [plus 3 Reviews]
Spotify launched its much-awaited "Discover" feed yesterday. First announced in December, Discover is a scrolling grid of suggestions for music you might find of interest. It looks great and it's a nice preemptive strike against any upcoming discovery-focused marketing campaigns by competitors.
Spotify's Discover is readily accessible via a tab in the navigation sidebar on the web app. It's one of those endlessly scrolling pages with columns broken into a grid, just enough irregularity to keep it interesting.
Announced Discover Features
- New personalised recommendations every day based on the music you love
- New releases from the artists you follow
- All the music and playlists shared by friends and trendsetters you follow
- Find out when an artist you love is touring near you – the information will just bubble up through recommended shows from Songkick
- Related Music: play a song and get instant recommendations on what to play next
Pitchfork and playlist site Tunigo will also be important sources of content and recommendations.
Early Reviews Of Discover
Spotify user Matt Elliott wrote:
"The Discover page scrolls endlessly, though you'll reach a point where it is just throwing hugely popular acts — Beyonce, Bieber, and the like — at you for the simple fact that they are 'popular right now on Spotify.' Until I reached that point, however, I found that Spotify did a reasonable job of making recommendations that were both accurate and illuminating."
However, Ellis Hamburger did not feel the love:
"The service's Discover recommendations could also use some work, having recommended me Kenny Chesney and Avril Lavigne for no apparent reason."
Bruce Houghton of Hypebot & Skyline Music:
"As a heavy Spotify user, I was excited by the arrival of Discover. While it does provide a page for centralized updates on the artists I listen to alongside reccomendations for new music, Discover is still just a page – another page = another time suck, if I remember. Is it too much to ask for info and discovery options within my Spotiify stream?"
Assuming Discover does a reasonable job for most people and improves over time, it does address a major missing piece, one that should ideally improve user experience and time on Spotify. It also gives them an additional form of discovery, in addition to "Radio" and "Playlists," to which to point when discovery-related rhetoric heats up with Daisy's launch.
To a large degree, discovery features have become standard on music services. Discover catches Spotify up while being quite likely to draw users in more deeply.
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
