This Spotify AI prompt turned my old favorites into fresh bangers

When Spotify rolled out the ability to create custom playlists from AI prompts, I pretty much ignored it. Of course, I pushed and pushed the feature when I first arrived, but I quickly discovered that unless you dropped detailed prompts, the outputs all seemed a bit “same”, with a tendency to favor my most played songs. (You know, just like all other Spotify playlists from this decade.) I love music for its art, humanity, and discovery, so I abandoned my brain’s AI playlist function.

Then the “Spotify 20” feature arrived last week, with a personalized playlist of the songs you listened to the most throughout your Spotify history.

THIS CHANGED EVERYTHING.

The “best songs of all time” playlist Spotify created for me is full of the music that has inspired me over the years, the art I’ve discovered, and that made me want to cry, dance, and run through walls. It’s the ultimate musical form of everything I, Brad Chacos, have listened to since Spotify launched in the United States in 2011.

NOW that This is really useful information! And I suspected that was the key to convincing Spotify to give me its first truly well-generated playlist, well, Never. (Spoiler: I was right.)

The Spotify AI prompt that worked

Inspired, I opened Spotify’s AI playlist tool and entered the following prompt:

“Go through my Spotify 20 playlist to get a real handle on my favorite music of all time. Create a playlist of music that matches the same moods and musical preferences, but only consists of songs that I’ve never played or have only played less than 3 times.”

Spotify thought for a few minutes – the AI ​​prompts are slow, y’all – then happily spit out the following:

“Alright, I checked out the vibe of your best songs of all time and built something with a similar energy – think lots of hip hop, industrial vibes, gritty electronica and alt-rock – but all the songs here are either totally new to you or you’ve only played them a few times. This should feel like a real discovery.”

And then he dropped a absolute banger of a playlist – jam-packed music that’s dripping with my very unique “Brad vibes” while remaining totally fresh. Yesterday, when I was picking up my daughter from school, she even asked me: “What is this playlist? It looks like everything you listen to but I don’t recognize any of it.”

Assignment. Accomplished.

Better yet, given the “new or barely played” nature of the prompt, you can reinsert it into Spotify’s AI playlist feature and get a whole new set of bangers over and over again. I’ve noticed a few songs repeating over the course of a few replays, but they quickly give up after reaching the “played 3 times” threshold. (I had to start using the Liked Songs feature just so I could keep up with all the new discoveries!)

I’m sure the magic will eventually wear off as I play through similar tracks over the weeks and months, but after about a week of playing, it’s the Spotify AI prompt that continues to rock my socks and melt my face. Most of my music discoveries happen outside of Spotify, but for the first time in a while, this little trick actually got me excited to open the app and browse new finds.

Spotify is surprising and delighting me for the first time in a long time, and helping me find new music to love for the first time in even longer. Kudos to Big Music for my new love with Adam Freeland.

Try the prompt. I hope this works as well for you as it does for me!