iHeartRadio adds weekly playlist of personalized music recommendations

iHeartRadio has launched a new music discovery feature called Your Weekly Mixtape. The playlists can contain 30-75 songs, refreshed every Monday. The collections are tailored to each particular user based on listening preferences and which songs they have given a thumbs up or thumbs down. The blog post announcing the feature notes that the playlists will also include “new releases and personalized trending music.” All of iHeartRadio’s registered users, both subscribers and ad-supported listeners, will have access to the feature. Subscribers will be able to change the order of tracks in the mixtape, just as they can for any other playlist on the platform.

This development marks the latest streaming service to hop on the bandwagon of personalized playlists. Spotify’s Discover Weekly was one of the earliest dedicated playlists to take the regularly updating mixtape concept to notable success. Apple Music also made personalized playlists a core feature from its launch, although those are shorter and refreshed daily. Discovery features have become an industry standard; listeners can now expect to have some amount of personalized recommendation from their service of choice.

Anna Washenko