Streaming music is, for better or worse, the main way we access our music these days, and after years of use your libraries will be bulging with hundreds of saved albums and playlists. If you are obsessed with making your own custom playlists for yourself or in collaboration with friends and family, you might find it hard to track down your favourite collections in long lists of tunes.
Spotify is looking to change that by introducing a new feature that lets you design your own custom playlist cover art so you can find your best hype playlists faster than ever, as well as express yourself with cover art just like you admire on the albums of your favourite artists.
Once you’ve made a playlist you can rustle up coverage art for it using text, background colours and gradients, stickers, and any photo or image you pick. Time to stick that inspiring sunset picture or hilarious selfie of you and your mates on your playlists and get sharing.
“As an artist from New York City, I see creating custom playlist cover art as a powerful tool for our creative journey—embracing every outlet to express ourselves,” said Cey Adams, an album artwork designer who has worked with the Beastie Boys and Jay-Z.
“This Spotify feature empowers listeners to transform their playlists with the artists and songs that hold meaning for them, allowing them to build their identities through music and design. It’s exciting to see a feature that encourages everyone to tell their stories creatively, connecting us all through the universal language of art and sound.”
You’ll be able to view your artwork straight away after creating and share it with friends and family to enjoy your one-of-a-kind creation. Hopefully they’ll dig the tunes too, man.
If you want to test this new tool out you’ll have to be signed up to Spotify’s beta program, which pushes out new features for people to test early, and so that Spotify can tweak any potential bugs before it rolls out to everyone worldwide.
You can sign up to the Spotify beta on iPhone or Android via this link. At the moment it’s available for those beta testers in English in 65 different countries.
While it’s not the most groundbreaking feature, it’s quite cool to see a bit more customisation on a platform such as Spotify that by default offers very little. It could also appeal to the romantics out there who remember agonising over mix tapes back in the day and giving them to that special person. If this is the new digital version of that, we’ll take it.
