Whether you’re an artist with music to share and promote or you’re the average listener always keen to discover new music, chances are that you’ve heard of Spotify. With around 600 million monthly users, it’s one of the most popular music streaming platforms in the world. And like other online music streaming services, such as Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, SoundCloud, YouTube Music, and even Tidal, Spotify uses what’s known as an algorithm to analyze user data and provide personalized music recommendations.

Now, if you’re a music artist trying to promote your music on the platform, you might think of Spotify’s algorithm as a mysterious and elusive power that decides whether your songs will be heard by more listeners and whether you’ll make it in the competitive music industry. But as it turns out, it’s not so mysterious after all, and thanks to what you’ll learn in this article, you’ll be able to work with the algorithm to better promote your music on the platform.

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1. What exactly is an algorithm and why does Spotify use one? 

Let’s start at the very beginning. What is an algorithm? It’s basically a set of rules to follow to solve a problem in the most efficient way possible. In other words, if you have an issue, something you can use to solve it is an algorithm.

But why do Spotify and other music streaming services use one? 

Well, Spotify is a business and like any business, it wants to make money. To make money, it needs people to stream music, so its main objective is to ensure that people stay on the platform and consume more content. To do this, Spotify uses an algorithm to find out what its listeners like to listen to, then suggests tracks similar to the ones they already like, encouraging them to stay on the platform longer. 

2. The first step is gathering data on user listening habits

It all starts with the listener, so even if you don’t have any tracks to promote on the platform, the Spotify algorithm affects you and you may even have the algorithm to thank for your great taste in music. It’s a bit of a chicken or egg situation: which came first? Your gem-filled Spotify library, or Spotify’s algorithm that suggested many of those gems to you? Taste is never something that develops on its own. Your friends, your family, the radio… they’ve all influenced what you like. And now it’s the algorithm’s turn to do it.

So how does it work? Well, every time you listen to music on the platform, it collects data about that music to better understand your taste and be able to suggest more songs and tracks you might like from the millions of songs available on the platform.

Here are some of the things it looks for: What kind of music genre do you listen to most? Are there any artists you particularly like? How do you interact with artists and songs (do you follow or save them)?

Bear in mind that Spotify collects this kind of data from all its users to then analyze patterns across its entire user base, so everything (and everyone) is interconnected. For example, let’s say your playlist is full of Bob Dylan tunes, the algorithm will look at that and suggest similar artists and songs it thinks you might like by looking at the information it has gathered from other listeners on the platform who also like Bob Dylan.

Another thing to bear in mind is that the algorithm works slightly differently for listeners who use Spotify for free compared to those who are premium subscribers. The latter generally receive more tailored and refined recommendations, as the algorithm takes more factors into account, including specific playlists. On the other hand, free users do not benefit from the same premium features and have limited access to things like offline listening and on-demand playback of specific songs, all of which can slightly affect the way the algorithm interprets their listening behavior.

Ok, so now that Spotify has this information and is ready to present you with the songs it thinks you might like, how does it do this? It does it with different tools which are algorithmic playlists, aka your Release radar, your Discover Weekly, your Daily Mixes, or Spotify radio playlists, all of which play a major role in how music is consumed nowadays.

3. Release Radar

Every Friday, Spotify creates a personalized playlist for each user that includes all the new tracks released that week by the various artists the user follows or listens to often. This is called Release Radar and if you’re a listener, you’ve probably discovered some of your favorite songs from artists you already like by browsing your Release Radar and adding new discoveries to your music library or catalog. 

If it’s your own music you’re sharing through the streaming service, it’s important to note that, as its name suggests, Release Radar focuses on new releases, so your song has to be less than a month old to appear in the playlist. And as it’s updated every Friday, it’s best to upload your new song on that day too.

Now, it’s only the users who follow you on the platform or who listen to your music regularly who will have your new song in their Release Radar. However, as with every rule, there is an exception and this is where the algorithm really comes into play.

If your song does very well within the small group of listeners it’s presented to, Spotify may decide to place it in the Release Radar of listeners who don’t yet follow you or even know about you, because it thinks these users might like your music. 

In other words, from a small number of listeners who really like the song and engage with it, the algorithm is able to identify a larger group of listeners similar to the first who might also like it and it presents the song to them, even if they don’t follow you. To maximize your chances of this happening, you need to make sure that your song works well and that users engage with it, listen to it in full, replay it, and save it… 

4. Discover weekly

Discover Weekly is one of the most popular algorithmic playlists on Spotify, and that’s because it’s highly personalized and current.

It works like this: the algorithm analyses your listening history over the past week and then suggests songs that you haven’t listened to yet but that are similar to the music you have been listening to recently. It’s updated every Monday and, as a listener, it’s a great way to discover new songs and artists that match your taste.

Now, if you’re an artist and you want your songs to feature in this playlist, they don’t have to be less than a month old, because what matters most is the popularity of the song on the platform in general and whether or not it’s trending. For this reason, it can be difficult for new artists to feature in Discover Weekly and one thing that might help them is to get on one of Spotify’s editorial playlists (but more on that later). 

5. Daily Mixes and Daylist

Spotify suggests new music every day through your Daily Mixes, which are personalized playlists that categorize the music you listen to into different genres. For example, let’s say you listen to a lot of hip-hop and a lot of classical music, Spotify will create two different Daily Mixes for these two very different genres and you can then listen to the one you like depending on your mood. You can have up to six Daily Mixes and each one will mix tracks from artists you frequently enjoy with similar artists you may not have heard of yet. 

Bear in mind that the algorithm is constantly analyzing user behavior and collecting data, even while you’re listening to a playlist, in order to refine its recommendations. It detects whether or not you like the songs, whether you skip them, whether you play them again… and it refines the playlist as it goes along to give you songs that better match your taste. 

Now, how are these Daily Mixes different from your Daylist, the brand-new feature launched by Spotify last September? Like the Daily Mixes, your Daylist is updated every day, but it’s even more personalized than a Daily Mix because it suggests music according to the time of day. The idea behind it is that your mood changes, whether it’s morning or evening, and that’s why your Daylist is updated several times a day, suggesting new tracks with each update. This new feature has been very popular since its launch and that’s partly because Spotify has made it very easy for its users to share their Daylist on their social media platforms. 

6. Spotify radio

Another algorithmic playlist worth mentioning is Spotify Radio, as it’s a popular way for many listeners to consume music on the streaming platform. In a nutshell, it’s a feature offered by Spotify that allows users to create personalized radio stations based on their favorite music. 

How it works: as a listener, if you want the platform to create a radio station just for you, you choose a song, an artist, or even a playlist that you really like and ask Spotify’s algorithm to create a radio station based on the content you’ve given it. In practical terms, you click on the three dots next to the song or artist and click Go to Song Radio or Go to Artist Radio. Spotify’s algorithm then gets to work suggesting songs to listen to that are similar to the one you’ve given it. 

And as an artist, it’s a great way to get discovered if your song is on someone’s radio playlist. 

7. A quick word on editorial playlists

The first thing to note about these is that they’re not part of Spotify’s algorithm, as they’re put together by people who work at Spotify and build playlists of songs that work well together. But even though they’re not part of Spotify’s algorithm, they still play a part in all of this, because the more popular a song is on the platform, the more likely it is to be picked up by the algorithm. 

So if you’re an artist and you want your songs to feature in one of the algorithmic playlists mentioned above, a good thing to do is to try and get your new music into an editorial playlist by submitting it to Spotify’s playlist curators. If you’re having trouble doing this, you can use a music promotion service like Groover to get in touch with Spotify’s playlist curators and submit your music directly to them.

To conclude, online music streaming services such as Spotify use an algorithm to enhance the listening experience of its users and they do this by collecting data on users’ listening habits and then feeding recommendations through algorithmic playlists.

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Want to get your music into playlists? ⬇️