Aamir Siddiqui / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Spotify is testing sub-genre and “More Discovery” chips within genre-based playlists.
- Selecting a chip revamps the entire playlist with fresh tracks, rather than filtering existing ones.
- For now, this feature appears limited to some users only, suggesting a controlled experiment or limited rollout.
Many of us have a love-hate relationship with Spotify. On the one hand, I absolutely love the Spotify Jam feature for social listening, and I use it practically every week to schedule music sessions with my partner and friends. On the other hand, Spotify’s discovery mechanisms have felt off to me over the years, regurgitating the same few popular songs. The company is clearly listening to the discovery issue, as users are now seeing sub-genre chips to help them discover new music.
Reddit user kwabb spotted genre-related chips in their Spotify-generated R&B Mix playlist. Such playlists are already tailored around a user’s preference but may not align well with the user’s active mood and preference, which can be a mismatch. Seemingly to counter this, the company has introduced chips such as “More Discovery” and sub-genre chips like “Alternative R&B,” “Neo Soul,” and “Pop R&B.” Presumably and logically, the sub-genre chips would be different according to the playlist.
The user says that selecting any of these chips updates the whole playlist with new content rather than merely filtering out the existing list. These chips have so far appeared only in Spotify’s genre mix playlists, but the user’s experience has been positive, as it has surfaced new music instead of cycling through the “same old” recommendations.
We reached out to Spotify for a statement, and a Spotify spokesperson gave us the following:
At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience. Some of those tests end up paving the way for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning. We don’t have any further news to share at this time.
I haven’t yet received these chips on my devices, so it’s possibly a controlled test or rollout, which we hope extends to more users. In the interim, if you’d like to improve Spotify’s music discovery, you can try to completely disable the Smart Shuffle option from the app.
