Spotify‘s playlist editors will now explain their picks to listeners – and get their own public profiles
Spotify‘s editorial curators have started showing their work.
The streaming company introduced Playlist Notes on Monday (August 17), a feature that lets its editors attach written context to individual tracks on playlists including Today’s Top Hits and RapCaviar.
Spotify gave its listeners a version of the same tool 18 days earlier.
“A great playlist does more than line up songs: it sets a mood, reflects a point of view, tells a story,” Spotify said in a blog post.
“With Playlist Notes, editors share why a track matters, what makes it culturally relevant, or why it belongs in that particular playlist,” the Stockholm-based company added.
“With Playlist Notes, editors share why a track matters, what makes it culturally relevant, or why it belongs in that particular playlist.”
Spotify
The feature grew out of User Notes, which Spotify launched on July 30 to let listeners caption individual tracks on playlists they had created or added songs to.
Spotify described that July launch as covering “select markets,” without naming them.
The listener version has since been expanded, and Spotify now applies the Playlist Notes name to both versions.
The listener version covers podcast episodes and audiobooks as well as tracks, and is rolling out on iOS and Android in more than 100 markets, though the company cautioned that “availability may differ from editors’ Playlist Notes.”
The editorial version launches alongside Editor Profiles, which give members of what Spotify calls its “globe-spanning team of editors” a page of their own inside the app.
“You can also get to know the people behind the playlists through Editor Profiles,” said Spotify.
“Each profile features an editor’s top tracks and albums, along with the playlists they contribute to,” Spotify added.
Editors’ notes and profiles are rolling out to Free and Premium users aged 16 and over in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
Six playlists carry them at launch: Today’s Top Hits, RapCaviar, Hot Country, All New Pop, mint and Fresh Finds Hip-Hop.
Spotify said the notes also surface in Now Playing, so a listener can see an editor’s comment on a track even when playing it outside the playlist the note was written for.
“Of course, our editors aren’t the only ones with stories to tell,” Spotify said of the listener-facing version.
On mobile, users can add notes to tracks, podcast episodes and audiobooks in playlists they own or collaborate on, with Spotify suggesting they “capture a memory, share a recommendation, or explain why a pick made the cut.”
“Anyone who can view your playlist can also see your notes, with your name linking to your profile,” said Spotify, adding that notes are subject to its Platform Rules and Terms of Use.
Playlist Notes caps a run of product launches from Spotify since December.
That month, the company launched Prompted Playlist in beta in New Zealand, an AI tool that turns text prompts into playlists and, Spotify said, gives users “the power to steer the algorithm.”
In January, it expanded Spotify Messages with live friend activity and Request to Jam, disclosing that nearly 40 million users had sent around 340 million messages since the tool launched in August 2025.
And in July, Spotify opened a beta that lets Premium subscribers talk to the app to choose music and ask questions about what’s playing.
Co-CEO Gustav Söderström previously made the case for human curation in December 2025 – in the blog post launching Spotify’s Prompted Playlist, an AI playlist tool.
“Spotify listeners have created nearly 9 billion playlists, which is proof that human curation is still the heartbeat of the platform,” wrote Söderström, then Spotify‘s Co-President and Chief Product and Technology Officer.
The scale behind that shipping pace is visible in Spotify‘s latest numbers.
The company closed Q2 2026 with 777 million Monthly Active Users, up 12% YoY and up 16 million on the prior quarter.
Its Premium subscriber base reached 300 million after 7 million net additions in the three months to the end of June.
Quarterly revenue came in at €4.777 billion (USD $5.56bn), up 14% YoY, while operating income rose 61% YoY to €655 million (USD $762m).
Gross margin finished at 33.4%, which Spotify called an all-time high.
“We have a scale that few companies in history have reached, a business that is healthy and compounding, and opportunities only we are positioned to pursue,” said Co-CEO Alex Norström.
Attaching names and tastes to playlist picks also moves Spotify onto territory Apple Music has claimed for years.
Rachel Newman, then Apple Music‘s Global Head of Editorial, wrote in 2022 that “human curation has always been the core to everything we do, both in ways you can see, like our editorial playlists; and ways you can’t, like the human touch that drives our recommendation algorithms.”
Added Newman: “With such a huge expanse of songs, we know you need someone there to guide you through.”
Apple Music held 12.6% of global music subscribers at the end of 2025, down from 18.4% in 2020, according to MIDiA Research.
It ranked second behind Spotify in 2020 and now sits third, behind Tencent Music Entertainment on 13.8%, with Spotify out in front on 31.4%.
YouTube Music sits fourth on 12.4%, up from 7.9% in 2020.Music Business Worldwide
