Spotify is experimenting with a new tool to guide user discovery, and it all starts with a few humbly pointed words.
A beta of the company’s Prompted Playlist allows Premium users to narrate, in plain language, whatever they’re in the mood to listen to, and then for Spotify to generate a playlist made from their entire listening history — from day one up through the present.
Available only in English and in New Zealand during the trial, it’s a feature that attempts to make Spotify’s algorithm feel less like a black box and more like an implement you actively wield. It trumps static “mood” filters in that it allows you to specify intent, context and time frames — and then automatically refresh at a given interval.
How Spotify’s new Prompted Playlist beta works
Type a prompt — like “songs from my longtime favorites mixed with new indie releases,” or “up-tempo pop and hip-hop for a 30-minute run that winds down gently” — and Spotify will generate a customized set based on what you’ve actually been listening to. You can modify the wording, fine-tune the vibe, or come up with new statements from pre-filled suggestions in an “Ideas” section should you grow stuck.
With each one, a brief explanation of why we picked it. That cue of transparency has been demonstrated in human-computer interaction research to increase trust and perceived control, and it’s a noteworthy step for music discovery, where opaque algorithms can alienate listeners.
Playlists can even be programmed to update daily or once per week, turning your prompt into a living and breathing station. With the power to go all the way back in your listening history, Prompted Playlist can bring a forgotten favorite together with a current obsession — something most on-demand playlist builders have trouble getting just right.
A Transition From Passive To Active Discovery
Over the years, Spotify has been adding layers of personalization — AI DJ, Daylist, Smart Shuffle and Blend to name a few — to help listeners find their way through a growing catalog that now includes more than 100 million tracks. The app is called Prompted Playlist, and it fits into that approach, but with a twist: Instead of doing what the algorithm tells you to do, you tell it what you want optimized.
That shift matters at scale. Spotify’s latest earnings release notes 600-plus million monthly users, and more than 220 million of them are Premium subscribers across the globe. Even slight increases in relevance can significantly shift what people hear — and which artists get surfaced — for an enormous audience.
For artists and labels, prompt-driven discovery offers a way to fight the all-or-nothing stakes of algorithmic funnels. The service is an old-salt music nerd with play buttons for muscle — “Listen to this!” But the algorithms are not spontaneous; they want direction and guidance, a helping (or two-upped) hand so they can frame-shuffle. If listeners point predictably (say, to “deep cuts from my top artists”) or less predictably (“similar to the jazz I loved in college”), then there will be pressure on the engine model to do some mining among back catalogs, not just tend toward the newest or most viral. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has repeatedly found that recommendations on streaming platforms are a key driver of discovery; incorporating user intent signals may help make those paths more diverse.
Transparency also fits into a broader industry reckoning. From “Why this ad” on social platforms to “About this result” in search, companies have promoted explainability. Architecting that level of clarity around music recommendations — down to short, human-readable explanations — may help cut through the sense that the feed is random.
How Spotify’s Prompted Playlist compares to competitors
Competing apps have some of these features, but none so thoroughly merge free-form prompts with the intimate stories of your own life.
Apple Music relies on algorithmic stations and editorial playlists; YouTube Music focuses more on radio creation and short-form discovery. Spotify’s take expands on its AI DJ and personalization stack to allow the user to write the brief, then hand it off to the model for execution.
It’s also a different value proposition from polling a generic chatbot for recommendations. Because Prompted Playlist is built right into Spotify, it can weigh tracks by your real plays, skips, follows and long-term loyalty — signals that third-party tools don’t get to see — potentially resulting in tighter and more satisfying sets.
The fine print of the beta and what may come next
For the time being, the beta is restricted in scope: Premium members only, English-language installs only and New Zealand residents only. Spotify hasn’t confirmed broader timing. That restrained rollout echoes the way it brought out AI DJ, language expansions and additions such as Daylist — test, iterate, scale.
The larger question is how granular control will become. Today you can dictate vibes, activities, artists, eras and pacing. A future version could allow people to tweak the weights — history versus innovation, mainstream factors versus niche ones — or impose hard-and-fast rules, like energy curves for workout regimens or time-capped commutes.
Notwithstanding the roadmap, Prompted Playlist indicates where music discovery is going: user-activated, explicable and constantly renewed. In a streaming universe that, according to industry trade groups like the RIAA, accounts for well over 80 percent of recorded music revenue, offering listeners increased say in the choices of the algorithm isn’t just a quality-of-life improvement — it’s an economic bet on which songs will break through next.
