Inside Spotify’s New Daylist Feature

On Tuesday September 12, Spotify launched a new feature called Daylists. Daylists are Spotify-generated playlists that change throughout the day—think your Daily Mix, but every few hours it’s a different mix. This is part of Spotify’s hope to use AI to make user-specific playlists that keep them hooked on the app while finding new music. I am always looking for a good playlist, but I think Daylists have a ways to go before it makes it into my everyday rotation. 

Problem 1: The Hyper Specificity:

Daylists attempt to be relatable and eye-catching by creating super specific playlists based on what you have listened to on that day and time in the past. This was so exciting to me because I love a niche playlist, but hate making them. One of my favorite parts of Spotify is that when I want to listen to a hyper specific playlist, all I need to do is type “POV: ___” into the search bar and be surrounded by hundreds of user playlists feeling exactly what I am feeling. 

When I opened my Daylist that first day, it was called “Producer Summer Camp Tuesday Morning”. What does this mean? Your guess is as good as mine. Thankfully, Spotify gives a playlist description of “You listened to fuzz on Tuesday mornings”. Nope, sorry Spotify, that didn’t clear anything up. 

The playlist titles remained odd throughout the week. Some highlights include “Lyricist Cat Wednesday Afternoon,” “Funky Floaty Early Thursday Morning,” “Happy Indie Pet Night,” and my favorite: “Bold ‘80s Synth Thursday Afternoon,” which contained exactly zero songs from the ‘80s. 

Problem 2: The Frequency of the Changes:

Despite not knowing what the title meant, I happily put on “Producer Summer Camp Tuesday Morning” and was enjoying a group of mostly songs I have listened to in the past mixed in with a few songs I didn’t know, but were by familiar artists. Then, five songs into this three hour playlist, morning became late morning, and with that my Daylist was completely different. Gone were my Summer Camp vibes (that I was learning meant Maggie Rogers and Bleachers) and replaced with “Emo Alternative Tuesday Morning”. Quite the tone shift. 

This is my biggest problem with the Daylists. They change so frequently that unless you put it on right when it appeared, you would never make it to the end of the playlist before the tone shifted on you. When I listen to a Spotify playlist, I want to be able to go back and favorite that song that has been stuck in my head since I listened to it. I want to be able to dig into the emotions of the playlist and sit with it for a bit. Unfortunately it’s the Snapchat of Spotify features: unless you screenshot the playlist, it’s going to be gone before you know it. 

I think I am going to stick with my Daily Mixes and let my Daylist become a forgotten feature. 

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