© Christian Hartmann/Reuters
As music streaming is getting increasingly popular, the way we are consuming tunes is changing. Listeners reach out to their faster song fixes by opting for personalized playlists of picks over long album deep dives. Spotify rides on this wave with projections of more than a billion playlists crafted by fans on the platform by the end of the year.
The Swedish music streaming giant still has faith in playlists, according to co-founder Daniel Ek. He boasted in a recent post that among listeners’ answers to the question of what makes Spotify so successful, playlists often rank very high. While Expertly Curated compilations are what the service is known for, user-made playlists pack an equally huge punch: Spotify is currently playing host to around 8 billion user-created collections. A whopping 725 million were created in the first half of 2024 alone, pointing to a colossal 1.5 billion homemade playlists by December.
Spotify’s AI Playlist tool is aiding and abetting this frenzy. Subscribers can use the beta function to conjure automatically generated playlists from a text prompt, to play, save, and share.
Although playlists will never replace the album, they’ve undoubtedly assumed some of radio’s duties within the digital realm. Playlists are a tool that curators and influencers wield to push selections that reach into the millions of ears that are hungry and ready to hear whatever is hot.
