Spotify’s new Prompted Playlists feature lets users “control the algorithm” using AI

Spotify is rolling out a new feature that lets users provide text prompts to “control the algorithm” and generate personalised playlists.

The Prompted Playlists feature is currently in beta phase and only accessible for Premium subscribers in New Zealand. A blog post written by Spotify co-President, CPO, and CTO, Gustav Söderström, says the platform is “entering a moment where you don’t just listen to Spotify, you control it.”

With the new feature, Premium listeners can describe what they want to hear and set rules for a personalised playlist using a chatbot-style interface. Spotify says that “unlike anything before it”, this feature taps into your entire Spotify listening history, right back to day one.

This isn’t Spotify’s first use of AI, with its AI-powered DJ having launched in 2023.  The feature was later upgraded to be able to take requests via voice or text, and it also introduced AI playlists in 2024. So far, ultra-specific prompts haven’t worked so well with these features, and it looks like that may change with this new tool.

Spotify suggests that you could ask for “music from my top artists from the last five years,” then push it further with “and feature deep cuts I haven’t heard yet” as an example of how to interact with Prompted Playlists.

It can also be set to refresh daily or weekly, so you can essentially use it instead of Spotify’s longstanding Discover Weekly feature, in which it decides on new music you might enjoy for you. Each song in your Prompted Playlist will also be accompanied by descriptions and context that tell you the story behind the recommendation.

In his blog post, Söderström goes on to add: “We believe that technology is only as good as the humans behind it. Spotify listeners have created nearly nine billion playlists, which is proof that human curation is still the heartbeat of the platform. But until now, unless you were a developer at Spotify and could write your own playlist algorithm, your best ideas might have stayed in your head.

“Prompted Playlist brings those ideas to life using just the English language. There’s no longer a tradeoff between control and convenience. You finally get both. And for artists, this unlocks smarter, more inspired discovery, surfacing their music for the right listeners and opening new ways to deepen their fan bases.”

No further details on when this feature will broadly roll out have yet been revealed.  To read the full blog post, head over to the Spotify Newsroom.

Rachel is a DIY musician who began learning guitar and keyboard from her bedroom at 14. She has written news and features for MusicTech since 2022, and also has bylines across Kerrang!, Guitar.com, and The Forty-Five. Though a lover of heavy music, her guilty pleasure is 2000s pop.