The music subscription giant Spotify has always put its focus on playlists, allowing users to create their own, collaborate with friends, and subscribe to others. There are likely billions of playlists on the platform, created by every day users and also by trusted voices (Pitchfork, for example) for every reason under the sun… playlists are rarely random.
But until recently, Spotify offered no curation for this wealth of data. Sure, some apps on the Spotify API aim to help you out (Playlists.net, Tunigo), but Spotify itself offered very little in the way of playlist recommendation.
Browse aims to change that. According to the Spotify blog, Browse will help users find playlists for every mood, moment and trend. A team of 35 musicologists, editors and writers sort through the data to identify the playlists that are gaining traction or that they feel resonate for specific purposes… creating some compilations themselves along the way.
“Spotify Browse adds the human touch to our recommendations, creating a three-dimensional approach to music discovery. Between your friends, our personalized recommendations and real music experts, it’s the perfect formula to ensure you’ll always have the right music for every moment.”
Other music services have struggled to include a similar strategy… iHeartRadio’s “Perfect For” recommends stations based on activity, Apple’s iTunes Radio will feature stations organized by mood, and Jimmy Iovine’s Daisy (rumored for release in the coming months) claims to power its entire service through a mix of human and algorithm based playlist creation.
But when it comes to human based music curation and recommendation, there is one music platform that currently has the upper hand. 2013 FlashFWD “Best in Discovery” honoree Songza created its “Music Concierge” service to be radically different from the competition when it launched in 2012. To those unfamiliar, the service is powered by a group of music experts, creating playlists that are editorially vetted, manually organized into activities/genres/moods, and consistently updated based on user data.
Co-Founder Eric Davich is confident… Despite other music giants like Spotify and Daisy catching on to human-curation and the current diversity of available browsing mechanisms, he is certain that “no one can beat our curation.”
“Our goal with the Music Concierge is to make whatever you’re doing right now, better. We don’t just curate music, we curate soundtracks to peoples’ lives and deliver them in a simple and easy way that doesn’t require digging or mental math. Moreover, our playlists are curated by music experts (music critics, journalists, ethnomusicologists, producers, DJs etc.) and are editorially vetted, updated, and refreshed regularly based on performance.
Additionally, since Songza’s product is lifestyle enhancement (not just music), our platform is a great way for celebrities and brands, who are established expert lifestyle curators in their own right, to contribute their own soundtracks for their fans and the Songza community. Who better to curate a soundtrack for “Putting on Your Party Dress” than a respected fashion designer? Who better than to set the mood for your dinner party than a well respected celebrity chef? Who better to motivate you during your workout than an Olympic athlete?”
Of course, Spotify has an advantage in its favor. Their ability to filter the billions of playlists already being created by their millions of users remains a key selling point, though it’s tough to say whether that will necessarily make the recommendation service stronger. As Davich points out, it’s becoming a crowded space as more and more companies attempt to create “curation-based discovery experiences.”
It’s tough to say whether these services will end up doing a great job at what they set out to do, but what’s for sure is that they’ll need to be radically differentiated in order to stand out. We at Songza are confident that we have a competitive advantage when it comes to curation in that we have the largest library of expertly-curated playlists on the face of the earth and we’ve had a huge head start in mapping those playlists to peoples’ lives and collecting data about our users’ daily activities and musical preferences. This has enabled us to evolve our product to a point where we can surprise and delight each individual Songza user with a personalized and fresh discovery experience no matter the context.”
We’ll see if Browse lives up to it’s promises, but the addition clearly indicates that major music services like Spotify are learning (maybe a bit late in the game) that expert, human recommendation is not only powerful, it’s now necessary.
cover photo via techradar.com
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