Spotify’s 5 Best Personalized Playlists

If you’re tired of listening to the same old songs and albums, Spotify’s personalized playlists can add a welcome touch of variety.

Spotify is constantly adding to its roster of auto-generated playlists and it can be difficult to keep up with them, especially on the desktop app, which doesn’t make them easy to find. (Hint: Open the Search menu and open the Made for You section.)

Again, here are five of my favorite Spotify personalized playlists, and there’s a bonus sixth entry that the service just released and so it’s too early to tell if it’s good or not!

Note, some of these playlists may only be available to Premium subscribers.

1. Release the radar

If you really want to inject fresh sounds into your speakers, the Release Radar is an excellent way to do so. The Release Radar is a mix list of new music from artists you’ve followed or listened to before, refreshed every Friday.

To be clear, these won’t always be songs you’ve never heard before. At the top of my release radar this week is a live version of The Chain by Fleetwood Mac, as a new Rumors live album is out. Still, it’s a great way to introduce completely fresh tunes and new versions of your old favorites.

2. Daily Drive

A great playlist for those commuting to work in the morning, Daily Drive is a mix of news reports and music. Here in the UK, audio news is provided by respected sources such as The FT, The Times and Tortoise, but the sources are selected from your region.

If I have one criticism of this list, it’s that the music choices tend to be on the safe side, relying on hits from your most-listened-to artists rather than offering something new for the morning.

3. On record

On Record is a great way to learn more about the artists you listen to regularly. Like Daily Drive, it combines music with spoken-word podcasts. For example, my current On Record playlist includes U2’s In a Little While followed by an episode of the Song Exploder podcast, where artists explain how they wrote a particular song, in this case U2’s Cedarwood Road. It’s a clever combination of different types of audio content on Spotify.

4. Daily Mix

Spotify offers Premium subscribers up to six daily mixes based on their different music tastes. The mixes are loosely grouped by genre. For example, my current Daily Mix 4 is filled with 1990s indie bands, while Daily Mix 3 focuses on older bands like The Beatles and The Kinks.

As your music tastes change, so do the Daily Mixes offered. And, of course, every list is updated every day. With almost three hours of tracks in each of those lists, you definitely won’t be missing out on music.

5. DJ

The DJ is Spotify’s AI-generated host, called “X”, who pops up every three tracks to give you a few seconds of chat. This could be a bit of trivia or news about some of your favorite artists (“Suede are back on tour this month…”) or just an introduction to the next batch of songs, which usually Are based on theme.

My initial reaction to DJ was “why would anyone listen to AI noises in the middle of music” but it’s brief enough not to be irritating, and I like the way it pings between different genres. “Hey, Barry. Here’s some music you were listening to in 2016.” Oh, go ahead then…

Bonus New Entry: Delist

Do you often listen to 90s dance music to get in the mood to go out on a Friday night? Or kick back with some Sunday morning classical music?

The new Daylist looks for trends in your past listening behavior and then delivers the type of music you typically listen to at that time of day. It offered me a playlist of live performances, because that’s what I listened to last Wednesday afternoon. News to me, but still I’m enjoying David Bowie’s blast from Live Aid!