Spotify’s Only You audio ‘birth chart’ experience is like midyear Wrapped

Spotify’s Only You rolled out Wednesday as the music streaming service’s latest personalized experience based on your listening data, similar to its year-end Wrapped recaps that call out the music that defined your year. But rather than highlighting what you listen to there, Only You is meant to dive into how you listen with Spotify, with gimmicks like an 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. 

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. 

The Only You experience (that is, a personalized pseudo-video about your listening habits) is available only on Spotify’s mobile apps for Android and iOS. But other elements of this Only You campaign, like some new personalized playlists and Blend, are available in what’s called the Only You hub, which should be available to see on Spotify’s web player and its desktop app. 

If you’re having trouble finding your Only You experience, you need to make sure you’re using the most recent version of Spotify’s mobile app. And it’s possible you may not be eligible for the experience at all, if you haven’t been using Spotify much lately: You must have streamed 30 tracks across five different artists over the last six months.

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. In the spotlight Wednesday, Only You and Blend are Spotify’s latest personalized curations. 

Only You’s in-app experience can only be accessed on mobile via Spotify’s apps for Apple and Android mobile devices. But an Only You hub, which collects all the elements, is available on Spotify’s desktop player and on the web; it will prompt you to open Spotify’s mobile app for the in-app experience if you aren’t already using it. 

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 is available for both free and paid Spotify customers in 79 markets, and it 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.

Read more: Best streaming music service

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