When Spotify rolled out the ability to create custom playlists from AI prompts, I pretty much ignored it. Sure, I poked and prodded the feature upon arrival, but quickly discovered that unless you dropped in detailed prompts, the outputs all felt a little “same-y,” with a tendency to favor my more heavily played songs. (You know, just like every other Spotify playlist this decade.) I love music for its art, humanity, and discovery, so I jettisoned the AI playlist feature from my brain.
Then the “Spotify 20” feature arrived last week, complete with a personalized playlist of the songs you’ve played the most over your entire Spotify history.
THIS CHANGED EVERYTHING.
The “all-time top songs” playlist that Spotify created for me is rife with the music that inspired me over the years, art that I discovered that made me want to cry and dance and run through walls. It’s the ultimate self-selected musical shape of everything I, Brad Chacos, have listened to since Spotify launched in the U.S. in 2011.
Now that is genuinely useful info! And I suspected it was the key to coaxing Spotify into giving me its first actually good generated playlist, well, ever. (Spoiler: I was right.)
The Spotify AI prompt that worked
Inspired, I opened Spotify’s AI playlist tool and entered the following prompt:
“Go over my Spotify 20 playlist to thoroughly understand my favorite music of all time. Create a playlist of music that fits the same vibes and musical preferences, but only consisting of songs I’ve never played or only played under 3 times.”
Spotify thought for a few minutes – AI prompts are slow, y’all – and then cheerily spit out the following:
“Alright, I checked out the vibe of your all-time top songs and built something with similar energy – think lots of hip hop, industrial vibes, gritty electronic, and alt rock – but all songs in here are either totally new for you, or you’ve only played them a couple times. Should feel like a proper discovery run.”
And then it dropped an absolute banger of a playlist – one chock-full of music that drips my very unique “Brad vibes” while still feeling utterly fresh. When I was picking up my daughter from school yesterday, she even asked, “What is this playlist? It sounds like everything you listen to but I don’t recognize any of it.”
Mission. Accomplished.
Better yet, given the “new or barely played” nature of the prompt, you can plop it back into Spotify’s AI playlist feature and get an entirely new fresh set of bangers over and over again. I noticed a couple songs repeat over the course of a few re-spins, but they quickly drop out after hitting the “played 3 times” threshold. (I’ve had to start using the Liked songs feature just to be able to keep track of all the new discoveries!)
I’m sure the magic will wear off eventually as I churn through similar tunes over the weeks and months, but after a week or so of playing around, this is the Spotify AI prompt that keeps consistently rocking my socks and melting my face. Most of my music discovery takes place off Spotify, but for the first time in ages, this tiny trick has me actually excited to open up the app and jam through some fresh finds.
Spotify is surprising and delighting me for the first time in ages, and helping me find new music to love for the first time in even longer. Shoutout to Big Music for my newfound Adam Freeland love.
Give the prompt a try. Hopefully it works as well for you as it did for me!
