Spotify Radio: A Beginner’s Guide

Somewhat contrary to what the name might suggest, Spotify Radio isn’t all that random. The feature refers to Spotify’s ability to build playlists centered around a particular song, artist, album, or even playlist. What you get is a personalized stream of music to fit the mood you are in. Or, maybe, we shouldn’t be using the term “stream” because it’s closer to a finite, yet dynamic, playlist containing an average of 50 songs. We say dynamic because its content will change over time, fed by one of Spotify’s many clever algorithms. Examples of similar instances in this app include Daily Mix, Discover Weekly, and Release Radar.

It shouldn’t be brand new information to you if you are a frequent Spotify user that the app is famous for and apparently takes pride in, its recommendation algorithms. Spotify Radio is one example of how the software analyzed your listening habits to offer you personalized content. This also involves a common step in algorithms of this type that consists in finding users with a similar taste. For the purpose of Spotify Radio, this is done based on a specific track, album, artist, or playlist. The app tries to factor in what people who share your love of this particular song/set of songs like to listen to and then offer it to you depending on the patterns you have been showing as a Spotify user.

The good news is that Spotify Radio is available to all users including those who don’t pay for a subscription. This comes with some minor limitations, but the chances are high that you won’t notice them in the context of this feature as long as you have been able to ignore them when simply listening to your favorite music with Spotify. It works on any client, including the desktop or web app for PCs and the mobile edition. Now, suppose you want to create a playlist of around five dozen songs that will set you in a particular mood, but you don;t want to pick tracks manually. Here’s the procedure to follow for a personalized Spotify Radio playlist.

1. Open the Spotify app on your device of access the website via your browser.

2. Find a song, artist, album, or playlist that best represents the mood you want to spend the next couple of hours in.

3. Click the three dots next to this title.

4. You might need to click Go to song/album/playlist/artist first or select the option to start a radio playlist based on it straight away.

A common question when it comes to Spotify Radio is whether you can save and/or download what you get as a result. The short answer is yes, but this doesn’t apply to playlist-based feeds. Unfortunately, these can be neither saved for later nor downloaded. As a non-Premium user, you can add a Spotify Radio mix based on a particular track, artist, or album and listen to it later. You’ll need a subscription to also download it.

Because Spotify Radio relies on the app’s algorithms to supply you with music you’ll like, you might notice how random experiments tend to affect its choice of content. You can end up with a playlist full of something you don’t like that much only because you have recently added a title that’s not your style generally. When the users who also like it start listening to something new, Spotify sees you don’t have the other track on your playlist yet and offers it to you.

There are a few ways in which you can “train” the algorithm to make sure it works for you, in particular by adding titles you like to favorites and making sure to listen to your kind of music past the 30s mark, which is where the app decides that you didn’t eventually skip it. How often does Spotify offer you really good music to explore? What was the last thing you really loved? Share in the comments.