It’s ten in the morning. What do you want to listen to? According to Spotify’s new Daylist feature, what I need right now is some hardcore punk rock. Later, it might suggest some chill wave or maybe some synth pop to get me in the mood for going out tonight.
Your Daylist could be, and almost certainly will be, completely different. My kids are more likely to wake up to the sound of “bedroom pop banger early morning” and my eldest will no doubt be blasting the dulcet tones of, er, Cattle Decapitation after school.
Daylist is a new auto-generated Spotify playlist for both free and premium users. Think of it as a time-sensitive version of a For You playlist. Not only does it know what you listen to, but it knows when you tend to listen to it on the best music streaming service.
What does Spotify Daylist actually do?
As the marketing bumph puts it: “This new, one-of-a-kind playlist on Spotify ebbs and flows with unique vibes, bringing together the niche music and micro genres you usually listen to during particular moments in the day or on specific days of the week.”
It’ll update several times a day to reflect the kind of music you usually listen to at particular times of day and on which days, so if you tend to be a house mouse through the week and a party animal at the weekend you’ll get very different Daylists on weekdays and weekends. Similarly, if you tend to blast out bangers in the morning but prefer softer sounds for studying or work, your Daylist will reflect that too.
If you like a particular Daylist, you’ll be able to save it just like you would a normal playlist and you’ll be able to share it with your friends too. You’ll also be able to share images of your Daylist to social media.
As with any personalization feature, the more you use Spotify the more accurate your playlist is going to be. I don’t use Spotify much and I rarely listen to hardcore punk so my recommendations aren’t going to be particularly personal, but if you’re a daily listener who uses Spotify to soundtrack pretty much everything then Daylist should deliver impressive results and perhaps introduce you to new music you’ll love as much as the songs you already play.
I love the idea behind this, and I’m excited by the possibilities. Maybe in the future, Daylist could develop location or device awareness so it knows when I’m doing the school run or taking a long trip and could blast the kids with hip-hop or play me some mournful alt-rock accordingly.
The new Daylist feature is live from today in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland at spotify.com/daylist, so you can get listening to it with one of the best headphones or best Bluetooth speakers right away.
