Spotify is working on a couple new features that would amp up the social angle of the streaming music service. First is a new weekly playlist that appears to still be in the testing phase. The concept is called Friends Weekly, and it’s a collection of tracks that your social connections are favoring. A screencap from a user shared to Reddit shows the playlist with the tagline: “Enjoy the best of what your friends are listening to this week, chosen just for you.” The wording makes it sound like if your bestie is a closet death metal fan and you can’t stand the stuff, your playlist probably won’t be taken over by Carcass.
If that sounds a bit like Discover Weekly got mashed-up with Facebook, you’re not wrong. That connection is made even more explicit with the second feature, where some users have a new section on the home screen called Friends’ Discover Weekly. These have direct access to the weekly, algorithm-generated collection of songs recommended to some of your social circle. It’s possible for anyone to root around in people’s Spotify profiles to access and follow those playlists if they are left public, but this feature would remove the digging. According to The Verge, this feature is in more limited testing, and is not available to everyone who currently has Friends Weekly.