Apple Music andSpotifyare widely regarded as some of thebest music streaming services around, but they appeal to people for vastly different reasons. The former is a favorite in the audiophile community for CD-quality orlossless audio streaming, while Spotify has a fantastic music recommendation engine and is renowned for its features designed to help you discover new tunes. It turns out Apple was taking notes, and is rolling out a new system of its own to help introduce you to new music.
Spotify makes it easy to learn about new music and podcasts with easy access to features like the Radar and Discover Weekly playlists. Apple Music’s latest attempt, first spotted byApple Insider, tries to mimic the latter with a new Discovery Station located underListen Now→Stations for You→Discovery Station. The idea is that it will feature songs like the ones you already listen to, but ones you haven’t heard before or added yet to your library (viaThe Verge).
Although Apple hasn’t made any formal announcement about the new Discovery Station, it seems to already be rolling out to most users on mobile, desktop, and the web. The new option is located conveniently besides the Personal Station, where you can find the tracks you frequent most. Interestingly, Apple Insider noticed the recent addition when the icon for the Personal Station changed from a plain red play button to a red arrow pointing to the right, animated to point outwards. Beside it, the Discovery Station icon is a blue arrow animated to pointinwards.
Although user feedback has yet to come through, and Apple Music will need time to get to Spotify’s levels of accuracy with recommendations, Discovery Station looks like it should be a welcome addition. Sincemigrating libraries across music streaming appsisn’t easy, features like this just give us one more good reason to keep all our listening in one place.
