Digital music streaming and subscription company Spotify today released a new feature called ‘Discover’, in an effort to help its many millions of users around the globe find out about new artists and music they will likely enjoy. The company aims to achieve this by not only leveraging its proprietary recommendation technology, but also by banking on services such as Pitchfork, Songkick, Tunigo, and others to make for a smooth and useful way for users to discover new music.
The debut of the Discover page completes the social circle that Spotify had initiated back in December when company CEO Daniel Ek revealed that he was interested in finding a way to conquer the social experience. As TNW’s Harrison Weber explained previously, one of Spotify’s weaknesses was its inability to help surface interesting and relevant artists and songs from its catalog of music.
Last April, the music service took the first step in its mission to become more social. It released a “Follow” tab (which was seen first on TNW) on desktops that enables users to look at their Facebook friends and connect with them through Spotify. Additionally, the service recommends artists that users can follow to hear their latest tracks and albums.
Spotify says that the new Discover page will display personalized recommendations each day relevant to the music a user loves. It will include not only new releases from artists that are being followed, but also music and playlists from friends and “trendsetters”.
Clicking on any of the artists in the Discover page will automatically have one of their songs play in Spotify. We clicked on P!nk and her song with Fun frontman Nate Ruess “Just Give Me a Reason” began playing. Below that, Spotify displayed other artists we might find interesting, including Kelly Clarkson, Ingrid Michaelson, and Bruno Mars.
Leveraging its integration with services like Songkick, users can not only listen to the latest song from their favorite artist, but also learn when they’re going to be touring near them. Users don’t actually need to be following the artist — subtly hidden under each artist description is a tab that, when clicked, will reveal more information about their concert tours.
This feature isn’t just for music concerts, but also for news from Tunigo and will work on any third-party integration with Spotify.
Gustav Söderström, Spotify’s Chief Product Officer, says that with the Discover page, “we’re making good on our promise of helping you choose what to listen to when faced with millions of songs. We’ve made your listening experience more personal, more social, and more current.”
The Discover page is available to all of the music service’s 24 million active users and more than 6 million paying subscribers. While Spotify is available on Web, desktop and mobile, this new feature can only be accessed through its Web player.
Photo credit: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/Getty Images
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