Spotify Gets Several New Features for Premium and Free Users

Spotify is my music streaming app of choice. It was the first one I tried out, and getting into it, it just worked. The recommendations were great, the UI did everything I needed it to, and the subscription price wasn’t prohibitively high. Of course, that doesn’t mean Spotify has done everything right—there have been some odd UI changes here and there.

What keeps me on board, though, is the fact that the development never stops and the app always brings more good than bad. Today, the music streaming platform has announced a bunch of new features, some of which will be available to all users, and some only to Premium users, so let’s dive right into them.

Spotify Introduces Several New Features to Improve How You Control Your Music

I know a few people who have been listening to the same few albums and nothing else for the last five years. It’s a little odd to me, but I won’t knock on anyone else’s style. Most of us, though, change what we listen to quite a lot, and discovering new music is a big part of that. Spotify has introduced new features to help with music discovery and your playlist curation.

Some of these features will be rolling out to all Spotify users, while some will remain exclusive to those who pay for Premium.

For Everyone

It doesn’t matter whether you pay for Spotify or not. The app is bringing a bunch of new features to enhance your listening experience, and they include the following:

• Managing your playlists is a lot easier now. The Add, Sort, and Edit buttons are now in an easy-to-access spot at the top of the playlist. You’ll also be able to easily change the name of the playlist as well as create custom cover art for it.
• You can generate playlists from your Liked Songs section. I add a lot of music, from various genres, to my Liked Songs tracklist, and now, you’ll be able to filter by genre and use the “turn into a playlist” button to instantly generate one. However, this is only available to listeners in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa.
• The bottom bar gets a fourth icon, the Create button. It looks like a plus sign, and it’s in the bottom right. Tapping this brings you to a section where you can easily create a playlist, join a Blend, or collab with friends.

For Premium Users

It’s not surprising that Spotify is prioritizing those who are dropping money in its lap. You get all of the features above, and then these ones to spice things up:

• The Queue interface has been redesigned. It now comes with controls like Shuffle, Smart Shuffle, Repeat, and Sleep Timer, so you don’t need to return to Now Playing to tweak those.
• No more surprises. You will now know exactly what songs Spotify plans to play after the queued ones end.
• Spotify now allows you to turn off Autoplay and Smart Shuffle from the Settings section of the app.
• The Hide and Snooze buttons keep unwanted songs away. The Hide button has been revamped and will hide a specific track from a selected playlist, so it will never play on any of your devices. Snooze will stop recommending a track to you for 30 days.
• The Create menu supports Jam, which allows you to listen to songs in real time with friends, and AI Playlist, which lets you turn an idea into a playlist filled with music.

What Does Spotify Premium Give That Regular Spotify Doesn’t?

With all the extra features Spotify Premium offers, you might wonder whether it is worth the money. Well, that depends on you, but let’s take a look at some of the things it offers that free Spotify doesn’t.