This Hidden Spotify Feature Makes the Best Personalized Playlists

Spotify playlists are a surprisingly big part of my life. I make a handful of new, curated, choreographed ones for the spin classes I teach every week and otherwise meticulously maintain quarterly playlists designed to represent the overall vibe of specific, three-month periods in my life. I only edit those during the 12 weeks of the quarter, then leave them alone so I can revisit them and relive the era. This means I am constantly fiddling with the present playlist to make it just right, searching for songs that feel precisely aligned with however I'm feeling. It's actually a time-consuming hobby—but I stumbled across a feature the other day that has made creating spin playlists and soundtracking Q1 of 2026 easier than ever.

The new Spotify feature

The best way I can describe the feature I stumbled upon is that it's like Tinder for songs. If you're listening to a song within the app, scroll down. Go past the buttons for Play and Next, past the About the artist section, past the lyrics, and stop when you see Explore [artist name]. Then, you'll have three options like Similar to [artist name] and Similar to [song name], but these can differ slightly.

Tapping one of those opens up the new feature. Say you choose Similar to [song name]. You'll be given 30 seconds of a song that Spotify's algorithm considers "similar" to the one you were just listening to, plus the artist's name, how many Spotify followers they have, and a three-dot menu that will let you add the song to your likes, add it to a playlist, go to the artist's page, and more. If you like the 30-second clip, you can add the song to your playlists. If not, you can keep swiping downward to hear a new one.

See how it's like Tinder? You make fairly snap decisions based on the quick preview and few details you get, then swipe away if you don't like it. I found a community forum post on Spotify's website about it, but otherwise, not much chatter. All I can tell is that it's been out since about May.

Why I like the feature

I prefer this to the other music-discovery options on Spotify because it gives you a quick preview of the song and makes the finding process simple. I am, of course, a big fan of the pre-generated Discover Weekly playlist or New Releases playlist Spotify makes for me every week, but it's time-consuming to listen to all the songs in them and it's not intuitive to find other new songs based on the finite playlists themselves. The 30-second quick hits and easy, swipeable dismissal of the new feature help me figure out if a song is worth my time, either for spin class or personal use, add it to the appropriate playlist if so, and keep moving.

What I especially like is the three hashtags under the artist's name. They are genre descriptions that match up with whatever song you're previewing and I've found them helpful because I have a hard time describing what kind of music I even like. Apparently, per the new feature, I like something called "speed garage." Tapping the #speedgarage hashtag that appears in the song previews brings me to another scrollable preview pane full of, exclusively, more speed garage—whatever that actually is. I still can't define it, but I learned I like it, and that alone is more beneficial than a year's worth of Discover Weekly playlists.

I used this feature during my Uber ride to the airport the other day and, by the time I was through TSA, I had 29 new songs in my Q1 playlist. I listened to them on the plane, weeded out ones that didn't match the quarterly vibe well enough, then sent it to my friends, who all gave the collection rave reviews like, and I quote, "this slaps."

View the full article