I can’t imagine a world without Spotify. In fact, I want to know why Spotify wasn’t created earlier so that I didn’t have to spend much of my adolescence with iTunes. Every time someone asks me if they should switch from regular Spotify to Spotify, I am the biggest advocate. Just to be clear here – I’m on a family plan now, I think so I don’t know how much that costs, BUT when I was paying for premium on my own at just $10/month, it was completely worth it. You may think that you can live in a world where an ad plays after every 5 songs or so, but when you’ve lived in a world without it – you’ll never go back. Secondly, it’s important to me that I can download my playlists and be able to play my music without being on Wifi – one I’m saving data (I think – I’m not sure, but probably) but two – I can listen to these playlists wherever I want including when I’m flying, which is a basic necessity.

Today we’re going to spend some time talking about two features from Spotify that I have been obsessed with lately – Release Radar and Discover Weekly. When I was in college, I definitely had a lot of time to find new music because let’s be real – it’s not like we were doin’ much else. These days, it’s harder cause I work and stuff during the day. We don’t have time to find new music on blogs like we used to, but luckily Spotify is willing to do the work for me.

Release Radar pulls me a curated list of new songs every Friday that artists that I already listen to have recently released. This is great for a number of reasons. A lot of times, I become obsessed with one or two songs from an artist, but then I sort of forget about them over time and internally make them a one-hit wonder by accident. This playlist reminds me of those that I once loved even including bands from my scene days in case I’m feeling nostalgic. Also, it’s not like I have this internal timer that lets me know every time an artist or band I listen to releases a new song and unless I’m searching for it, I wouldn’t hear about it any other way.

Every Sunday, I got Discover Weekly working for me. At the beginning, this was like a godsend, but as the weeks went by… I started to wonder if Spotify really knew me. The purpose of this playlist is that it pulls songs that are similar to what you already listen to – totally made for introducing you to new material and using machine learning and all that. Sometimes they get it right and other times, I clench up my fist like that Arthur meme. Whatever the case, I realized I need to be more appreciative because at the end of the day, this is saving me so much time. It’s not a perfect system, but what is? For the most part, this functionality has introduced me to a lot of new artists that I’m really happy I know about now because of this.

I haven’t used Apple Music or Tidal so I can’t really compare across all platforms, but I’m very happy with Spotify.