Skip to main content

Spotify's apps now show you the top songs your friends are listening to

Spotify's apps now show you the top songs your friends are listening to

/

Music discovery from the people you (presumably) care most about

Share this story

Spotify has a wealth of options for discovering new music (in fact, some might say it has too many). You can browse through countless genre-based radio stations, carefully curated playlists, top albums and tracks in your area, a new releases tab, and that's just scratching the surface. But now the company is adding a new discovery option that just might be the only one you'll need. As of today, Spotify will feature a constantly-updating "top tracks in your network" list, which simply shows the most popular songs that people you follow are listening to.

Reminiscent of Rdio's heavy rotation

It's a seemingly-simple option that seems like an absolute no-brainer. For a long time, Rdio featured a "heavy rotation" section that showed off the most popular songs and albums from people you follow, a feature that has since been absorbed into a more comprehensive "trending" section. On Spotify you've long been able to see a timeline of what your friends are listening to, but this appears to be the first time all of that data will be collected into a list personalized for you, based on your network.

While it's odd that Spotify didn't have something similar, it's not like the service has been hurting for users — and this feature addition gives it another tool to press its advantage against competitors like Rdio and Beats Music. Furthermore, going to an artist or album page will show you which of your friends have listened — another feature already present in Rdio. Given the ever-growing importance of social discovery and sharing in music, these features could go a long way in rounding out Spotify's feature set. According to the company, these new features will roll out to the iOS and Android apps today and will be added to the desktop app soon.