What you need to know
- Spotify has announced a dramatic overhaul of its home screen experience.
- The home screen and various feeds show automatic previews of recommended content.
- Spotify is also rolling out a new Smart Shuffle feature that inserts recommended tracks into user-selected playlists.
Spotify has made quite a few changes over the years, but the streaming service unveiled what appears to be its biggest visual refresh on Wednesday.
At the company’s Stream On event, Spotify co-president and chief product and technology officer Gustav Söderström showed off the app’s new home screen experience. The redesign features a more visual interface with large preview cards and dynamic feeds to showcase new songs, podcasts, and audiobooks.
Users can swipe large TikTok-like cards to automatically play snippets of recommended songs and other content.
“Now you don’t have to open the home screen and choose something that might interest you based solely on cover art you’ve never seen or an episode with a name you’ve never heard of.” says Söderström. Announced during the event. “Instead, he can listen to the most interesting parts of songs and episodes right away without having to tap once.”
As with nearly all new Spotify features and UI revamps, our goal is to make new content easier to discover. If users find something they like in these previews, they can tap the new plus her icon to add it to their music or podcast library. You can also hit the play button to start the content from the beginning or (for podcasts) continue the episode where the preview left off. Also, tapping a recommendation takes users to a track, album, or playlist to easily find that artist or related artists.
This experience continues with various feeds including Music, Podcasts & Shows, Audiobooks, and more. Users can still find their favorites at the top of their feed, but below that is scrollable recommended content. The music feed also includes personalized mixes and a new AI DJ at the top, and Podcast His feed shows real-time transcriptions so users can preview episodes without turning on the sound. Audiobook feeds show users up to 5 minutes of previews.
In addition to the revamped UI, Spotify is also upgrading the Enhance feature with the new Smart Shuffle. It works in a similar way by inserting the recommended tracks in the .
These recommended tracks are highlighted with a glitter icon and appear every 3 songs in playlists over 15 tracks. This feature also brings a new track each time you use it. This way, you can keep your playlist up to date each time you listen to it.
Finally, Spotify announced a new experience for creators to highlight their content. Among them is a new countdown page where artists can create hype for new music, including exclusive video clips and the option to pre-save the music downtown until its release.
Artists can also add short clips to their profile. These videos are less than 30 seconds of her and allow the artist to get up close and personal with her music. Clips can be part of artist profiles, albums, or tracks, allowing users to give more context to their work.
These features are starting to roll out to free and premium users worldwide. Spotify says music and podcast previews are rolling out where podcasts are available, and audiobook previews are available in the US, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Smart Shuffle is only available to Premium subscribers.
