Spotify launches Blend: A Curated Playlist for Friends 🤝
Spotify released its first social feature in a while- getting a curated playlist for two people with similar music tastes
We write a daily newsletter on all things Music, and the Business and Tech behind it. If you’d like to get it directly in your inbox, subscribe now!
Happy Friday everyone!
This week has been an exciting one for us here at Incentify, as we FINALLY shipped the long-awaited beta version of our product on Monday 💪🏻
Quick update on that front 📝
Over the past 5 days, we have rolled it out very selectively to around 30 people as of now, who have:
📝 Signed Up,
🔗 Linked their Spotify/Apple Music Accounts
➕Imported their existing playlists
🕺Created their first few Clubs on Incentify
If you’re yet to experience using the product, what’re you waiting for?
Check us out right here 👇🏻
Please DM us on Instagram or Twitter, or write back to me at rohan@incentify.club, we would love to talk to you about all things music!
While our week mostly went by fixing bugs, getting user feedback and improving a few features, it seems like someone else has joined the party when it comes to building in the Social and Music space 👀
‘Blend’ by Spotify: A personalised playlist, curated for you and your friend 📲
If you’re a Spotify user, you probably would’ve got a notification on your phone today morning, announcing the launch of Blend.
How does it work?
According to the official press release by Spotify:
We launched Blend Playlists in beta in early June as a new way for two users to merge their musical tastes into one shared playlist made just for them, making it even easier for users to connect, discover, and bond over the music they love with one another.
Now, the experience includes new cover art to easily identify each of your Blend playlists, taste match scores to see your listening preferences compared to your friends’, and shareable data stories that are unique to every listening pair and can be shared across social channels.
I tried it out with a friend of mine and without being biased here, the results were hardly exciting 😴
There seemed to be no cohesion in the playlist, which had a range of music from New York based Rock Band- The Strokes to Hindi Pop Icon- Arijit Singh 🤷♂️
This is how our shared playlist looked like 👇🏻
A lot of the artists in the playlist are indeed ones we both like listening to.
However, in my opinion, the beauty of a playlist is being able to capture the right mood of the listener, and having an algorithm pick it out, doesn’t quite cut it ❌
So how will this pan out for Spotify?
I’m not really sure.
In the past Spotify has been consciously clear about staying away from social features within its app, doing away with the in-app messaging back in 2015 and clearly positioning itself as a music streaming app.
It’s surprising to see them now dabble into Social once again, maybe they see the demand from users or are just trying to build more moats around their service.
The thing I liked the most?
Blend rates the percentage of how common a music taste is between two users 👇🏻
I can very well imagine this taking off on social media, with users trying to gauge how common their music taste is.
Maybe even a new pick up line for the DM’s? 💕
Spotify has been great in this regard, constantly coming out with similar features such as ‘Wrapped’, that share stats of a user’s listening pattern at the end of every year 📈
While I am a die-hard Apple Music fan, there’s no denying the unique place Spotify holds in Modern Internet Culture 🌐
Should you give Blend a try?
Sure, why not.
If you have no one else to rate music with, drop me a message and let’s match our taste!
And while you’re at it, why not even import the same playlist onto Incentify, and share it with everyone else to see? 😉
That’s it for today, and have a great weekend guys 🍻
If you liked this newsletter from Incentify, why not share it with someone you like?
P.S- Follow us on Instagram and Twitter for more such content on all things Music and Culture, now!