Spotify Debuts ‘Fresh Finds’ Playlists to Bolster Curation
After the success of Discover Weekly, Spotify expands its music discovery options with Fresh Finds.
Spotify’s role in breaking new artists is one the company has long championed, and today the streaming service is adding to its discovery options by introducing Fresh Finds, a series of playlists broken out into five genres filled with “undiscovered” artists.
The automated playlists, updated each Wednesday, will be divided into Fire Emoji (hip-hop), Basement (electronic), Hiptronix (“vocal pop”), Six Strings (guitar-based music) and Cyclone (experimental), basing its curation on a combination of music blogs, news sites and listening hours to bring bubbling artists and songs to the service.
“Spotify has always focused on artists and listeners, and with Fresh Finds we’re specifically looking at new creators, digging deeper to understand how undiscovered artists can attract a huge fan base,” Dr. Brian Whitman, Spotify’s principal scientist, writes in a statement today (Mar. 3) on the company’s blog. “By analyzing the listening behavior of our top tastemaker users, we’re able to predict new breakout artists and filter their hits-to-be into playlists with the most promising new music out there.”
Fresh Finds follows Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlists, updated each Monday, which are curated by individual users’ tastes and passed a billion total streams in October 10 weeks after its launch. The company also introduced a microsite last September called Found Them First, which allows users to pat themselves on the back by showing them which artists they listened to before they really “blew up.” Fresh Finds could help Spotify out as they move closer to a reported $500 million round of funding.