Spotify's Only You audio 'birth chart' experience is like a midyear Wrapped
Besides playing astrology with your tunes, Spotify also rolled out a custom curation feature called Blend that creates a shared playlist mixing your musical taste with a friend's.
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Spotify's Only You experience creates a pseudo-astrology birth chart of your musical tastes.
Spotify's Only You launched Wednesday, the music streaming service's latest personalized experience drawn from your listening stats. Similar to its year-end Wrapped recaps that call out the music that defined your year, Only You curates factoids about your musical taste like a astrological audio "birth chart," a call-out to a unique pair of artists that you listened to back-to-back, tailored playlists and other features. But where Wrapped highlights what you listen to, Only is meant to dive into how you listen with Spotify.
Piggybacking on the Only You rollout, Spotify is also launching a new personalized playlist feature called Blend, which will create a mix melding your musical tastes with that of a friend who also uses Spotify.
As culture at large has shifted to streaming as the most common way people listen to music, personalization has been crucial for services. The model of "all-you-can-eat" music opens up listeners to a vast library of tens of millions of songs, but it also sets up the problem of figuring out the sliver of that catalog you actually want to hear, especially songs you've never heard before but are likely to enjoy. That conundrum gives a leg up to services that excel in personalization.
Spotify's personalization, like its popular Discover Weekly playlists and Wrapped experiences, have helped it to become the biggest streaming-music service by listeners worldwide. Only You and Blend are Spotify's latest personalized curations.
Spotify described Only You as featuring things like:
- Your Audio Birth Chart, a sort of astrologer for your musical tastes that tells you a Sun artist you've listened to most over the last six months, a Moon artist that best reflects your "emotional or vulnerable side" and a Rising artist that you've recently discovered.
- Your Dream Dinner Party, a tool to make a personalized playlists from a selection of three artists you'd most like to invite to a dinner party.
- Your Artist Pairs, which calls out an unusual audio pairing that you've listened to recently.
- Your Song Year, which is supposed to recap how "you've musically traveled through different time periods."
- Your Time of Day, which highlights the music and podcasts you listen either early in the morning or late at night.
- Your Genres/Topics, which explains music and podcast genres that set you apart.
Only You ends June 30.
In addition to Only You, the Blend feature merges the musical tastes of two Spotify users into one shared playlist. After you invite a friend to blend with, the Blend playlist for both of you is created and updated daily, and it will morph over time as either of your listening habits and tastes change. Blend is available globally to all Spotify users, both free and paid.
Finding Only You
The Only You experience (that is, a personalized pseudo-video about your listening habits) is available for both free and paid Spotify customers but only on Spotify's mobile apps for Android and iOS. Other elements of this Only You campaign, like some personalized playlists and Blend, are available in what's called the Only You hub, which should be available on other supported platforms like Spotify's web player and its desktop app too.
To find Only You, open your Spotify mobile app.
You may see a promotion for Only You on your Home screen, but if you don't, tap on the search tab. There should be an Only You banner directing you to it.
You can also search for "Only You" in the search field. Only You should pop up as a search result for "genre."
If you're having trouble finding your Only You experience, make sure you're using the most recent version of Spotify's mobile app.
But if you're still failing to find an experience or any other bells-and-whistles, it's possible you're not eligible. To be eligible for the Only You experience, you must have streamed 30 tracks across five different artists over the last six months. And it's also possible you live in a country that doesn't support it: Only You is available in 79 markets, but Spotify operates in at least 170.
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