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Spotify's annual Stream On event returned for its second iteration on March 8, 2023. There, it announced an upcoming update that will change how the app looks and feels. While many users expected to hear more from them on their 'high-res' music feature, it looks like the redesign is higher on the priority ladder for now.
The revamp is one of the most significant UI changes coming to Spotify in the last decade and will move towards a more image/video-heavy interface resembling Tiktok and Instagram. This means you will see more boxes playing videos, enticing you to click on them instead of the square album and playlist covers you are used to seeing on the app.
This move is based on the company's vision of becoming "a home for creators." All in all, the upcoming changes have a good chance of making it more difficult than ever to listen to music on the app, as your attention is bound to get split into other content formats that the app wishes to highlight.
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All new features coming with Spotify's new interface update
The streaming service is set to incorporate a video-focused, vertical scrolling model popularized by the popular short-form content platform Tiktok. Since then, virtually all social media platforms, such as Instagram and YouTube, have been adopted. The app will also introduce a new 'Smart Shuffle' feature for better playlist recommendations and a new podcast autoplay feature.
What will the new Spotify interface look like?
One of the biggest USPs of the music giant was that it was of great use in helping people discover new music and, subsequently, other audio-based content formats such as podcasts and audiobooks.
There had been complaints about the app's interface getting too cluttered with all the different content formats that it started spotlighting. The company responded by separating music and podcasts into separate feeds. The upcoming upgrade seeks to refine this aspect further.
The new homepage interface will continue to feature your recent activity and 'Made For You' playlists and mixes based on your listening patterns. After this, you will see the AI DJ feature, currently only available in the US and Canada.
Beyond this begins Spotify's Tiktok takeover. You will be shown snippets of music videos along with the audio that will allow you to preview a song, single, album, or playlist. With the latter two formats, there will be slides, much like Instagram stories, showing you previews of upto five tracks.
What's nice is that you can keep listening to your music while scrolling through this feed, and the default settings will not interrupt your music, like Tiktok or Instagram. Instead, you can add the songs that pique your interest to a playlist or switch to it by tapping the video card.
The podcast feed will also get a similar upgrade. Instead of video snippets, you will get 60-second-long previews and text transcriptions unless it is a video podcast (which you can expect to see more of on the platform in the future).
The audiobooks and search feeds will also get similar uphaul, but the company promises that these suggestions will be based on your taste and app search trends. It will not generally push popular (seemingly randomized) content to you.
Spotify's new Smart Shuffle feature and how will it work
If you are familiar with the Enhance feature on Spotify, which adds songs to playlists made by you, you could choose to add to the playlist. Smart Shuffle is a slight upgrade to that.
Instead of adding these songs to your list directly, when turned on, this Premium-only feature will play songs that could fit the playlist, which you can add to the compilation by tapping a 'plus.' Tap the 'minus' to brush it aside if it doesn't fit.
Podcast autoplay is also coming to Spotify
The streaming service has had the autoplay feature for songs for a long time. A similar model is coming to the podcast feed as well. When you finish listening to an episode, you will automatically be taken to an episode from a different show.
As others mentioned, this update should make discovering more content you like on the platform more accessible. You will have the final say in whether you want this feature and can turn it off in the settings menu if it is not your bop.
Expected release date
A particular timeline for these updates was not shared at the event. However, they did mention that these updates will be rolled out to some regions before others as they fix and tweak certain features based on the feedback that they receive. At launch, the new features will be limited to smartphones only but will be rolled out to other devices over time.
You can expect the music app to keep looking like it currently does on your phone for the next few months before you start seeing changes. Moreover, it was also mentioned that you would not be jerked into the interface, and the change would be relatively gradual.
These changes aim to add to the wonder of discovery that makes the streaming service so special. However, the public is increasingly concerned about the TikTok-ification of everything on the internet. It will be interesting to see how the audio-based platform treats these upgrades.
