Spotify’s New Playlist Updates Throughout the Day to Match Your Mood

The algorithms continue their takeover: On Tuesday (Sept. 12), Spotify rolled out “daylist,” a “hyper-personalized, dynamic” playlist that updates throughout the day to “bring together the niche music and microgenres you usually listen to during particular moments in the day or on specific days of the week.” 

Daylist is now available in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland, according to Spotify’s announcement. The playlist updates several times “between sunup and sundown.” After that, who knows — listeners may have to choose their own music for a few hours before bedtime. 

Spotify was once known for its editorial playlists like Today’s Top Hits and Baila Reggaeton. Since these functioned much like radio, concentrating a lot of listener attention on the same handful of songs, they were watched closely in the music industry. Placements were eagerly sought after due to their ability to drive a lot of streaming activity. 

But since at least 2019, Spotify has been increasingly focused on rolling out auto-personalized playlists. That year, the service took collections like Beast Mode and Chill Hits, which previously had been the same for all listeners, and personalized them “for each listener based on their particular taste,” according to a company press release. (This change did not affect the biggest editorial playlists.)

Spotify found that this shift had three effects. Most importantly for the streaming service, listeners tuned in to personalized collections for longer. This is notable: Users were more likely to keep playing songs that Spotify fed to them based on their previous listening habits, rather than tracks selected by editors. Chalk one up to the machines.

In addition, the drive towards personalization meant that the streaming wealth was spread across more acts — raising “the number of artists featured on playlists by 30% and the number of songs listeners are discovering by 35%,” according to the company’s announcement. “We found that, after discovering a song through a personalized editorial playlist, the number of listeners who then seek out the track on their own for repeat listens is up by 80%,” Spotify’s blog post continued. “In fact, the average number of times a listener saves a track is up 66%.”

Personalization has become more important than ever in the age of TikTok, which is constantly praised for its ability to discern small differences between users’ preferences and serve up videos that keep them scrolling. “Everything on TikTok feels like it was meant especially for you,” one music executive told Billboard last year.

Daylight is Spotify’s latest attempt to generate that same feeling.

“You’re ever-changing,” the company wrote, “and your playlists should be too.”