Spotify’s new Curator’s pilot adds a human touch to music discovery

Spotify is experimenting with a new feature that allows users to add popular user-created playlists to the app’s homepage. The suggested playlists will display inside their own Featured Curator carousel if you’re a test participant. Spotify claims it’s testing the function in “certain markets,” but it doesn’t indicate where or on what devices it’ll be available.

Spotify chose curators based on their followings and playlist popularity, as well as whether they tell “unique tales through playlists” or develop “genuine connections” with listeners, as noted in the Featured Curators section.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

If you’ve spent a lot of time listening to streaming services, you’ll find that human listeners are much better at figuring out which songs go well together than the AI that operates the system. When it comes to guessing musical tastes, Spotify’s Made for You playlists can only do so much, and its in-house playlists are restricted when it comes to finding new artists. It’s great to see Spotify putting effort towards highlighting people’ work rather than burying it in search results.

This comes at a time where Spotify just launched a new tool called Blends, which allows you and up to ten other people to create a shared mix that is tailored to the group. Which will offer even more options for curation of your musical feed regardless of where you are and what you like to listen to.