This Hidden Spotify Feature Allows You to Create the Best Personalized Playlists.
Spotify playlists occupy a surprisingly important place in my life. I create several new, carefully curated, choreographed playlists for the cycling classes I teach each week, and otherwise meticulously maintain quarterly playlists designed to reflect the overall vibe of specific three-month periods of my life. I edit them only for 12 weeks of the quarter, then leave them alone, only to return to them later and relive the period. This means I’m constantly tweaking my current playlist to make it perfect, searching for songs that perfectly match my mood. It’s actually quite a labor-intensive hobby, but recently I stumbled upon a feature that made creating cycling playlists and curating the soundtrack for the first quarter of 2026 easier than ever.
Spotify’s new feature
The best way I can describe a feature I stumbled upon is as Tinder for songs. If you’re listening to a song in the app, scroll down. Go past the Play and Next buttons, past the About the Artist section, past the lyrics, and stop when you see “Explore [artist name].” You’ll then have three options, such as “Similar to [artist name]” and “Similar to [song title],” but they may be slightly different.
Tapping one of these buttons opens a new feature. For example, let’s say you select “Similar to [song title].” You’ll be shown a 30-second snippet of a song Spotify’s algorithm deems “similar” to the one you just listened to, along with the artist’s name, their number of Spotify followers, and a three-dot menu that allows you to favorite the song, add it to a playlist, go to the artist’s page, and more. If you like the 30-second snippet, you can add the song to your playlists. If not, you can swipe down to listen to a new song.
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See how similar it is to Tinder? You make fairly snap decisions based on a quick preview and a small amount of information, and then swipe if you don’t like something. I found a post on the community forum on Spotify’s website, but other than that, little is known about it. All I can say is that the app has been around since May.
Why I like this feature
I prefer this method of discovering music on Spotify because it allows me to quickly listen to a song and streamlines the discovery process. While I’m a big fan of the Discover Weekly or New Releases playlists that Spotify creates for me each week, listening to every song in them is time-consuming, and discovering new songs from these limited playlists isn’t very intuitive. 30-second quick listens and the easy swipe-to-dismiss feature for discovering new songs help me decide whether a song is worth my time, whether for a spin class or personal use, add it to the appropriate playlist if it’s a good fit, and move on.
What I especially like are the three hashtags under the artist’s name. These are genre descriptions that match the song you’re listening to, and they’ve been incredibly helpful because I have a hard time describing what kind of music I like. According to this new feature, I like something called “speed garage.” Clicking on the #speedgarage hashtag that appears in song previews takes me to another scrolling preview panel filled exclusively with speed garage—whatever that actually is. I still can’t define it, but I’ve realized I like it, and that alone is more useful than a year’s supply of Discover Weekly playlists.
I used this feature during an Uber ride to the airport the other day, and by the time I got through security, I had 29 new songs in my first quarter playlist. I listened to them on the plane, filtered out the ones that didn’t quite fit the vibe of the neighborhood, and then sent the playlist to my friends, who all gave it rave reviews, quoting, “This is awesome.”