Spotify Trials Prompted Playlist in New Zealand, Adding Deeper User Control to AI Music Curation
Image Credit: Jacky Lee
Spotify has announced a new beta feature called Prompted Playlist, designed to let listeners steer Spotify’s recommendation system using plain language prompts. Spotify says Premium listeners in New Zealand get early access from 11 December 2025.
The announcement was published on Spotify’s newsroom site by Gustav Söderström, Spotify’s Co President, CPO, and CTO, who frames the update as a step toward letting users “steer the algorithm” rather than only relying on passive listening signals.
How Prompted Playlist works
In Spotify’s description, Prompted Playlist lets you:
Describe what you want to hear and set rules for the playlist using your own words
Draw on your full listening history on Spotify, back to when you first started using the service
Refine results by editing the prompt and regenerating
Refresh the playlist daily or weekly so it keeps updating under the same rules
See short explanations and context for why tracks are being recommended
Use an Ideas option to kick off prompts if you are not sure where to start
Spotify also says this feature combines your listening patterns with “world knowledge” to keep playlists relevant to the prompt and to what is happening in culture more broadly, though it does not publish technical implementation details.
Why This Matters for Broadcasting and Curation
From a curation point of view, the biggest shift is that Prompted Playlist is not just a one off playlist generator. The ability to set refresh cadence effectively turns a prompt into a repeatable programming format, closer to a personalised radio concept, but with the listener defining the rules. Spotify explicitly positions it as a way to build a user controlled version of something like Discover Weekly.
That matters for modern “broadcasting” because playlists have become a primary way streaming services program music for large audiences, workplaces, and social sharing. A system that refreshes automatically while staying anchored to a user’s brief creates a new kind of lightweight programming tool, without needing editorial skills or time to manually curate.
How This Differs from Spotify’s Earlier AI Playlist
Some online chatter mixes up Spotify’s AI Playlist feature with this new Prompted Playlist update. They are related, but the rollout history is different:
AI Playlist in beta launched in April 2024 for Premium users in the United Kingdom and Australia on iOS and Android, using prompts to generate a playlist that users could then refine.
Spotify expanded AI Playlist in September 2024 to additional markets including New Zealand, alongside the US, Canada, and Ireland.
Prompted Playlist is a December 2025 beta update, and Spotify says New Zealand is the first market to get early access for this specific feature.
In other words, Australia was early for the original AI Playlist launch, while New Zealand is early for Prompted Playlist.
What Is Actually Evolving Here
Compared with AI Playlist, Spotify and independent coverage point to three practical upgrades:
More personal memory: Spotify says Prompted Playlist can use your listening history “back to day one”, which suggests a stronger “long term taste” model than a typical mood based prompt tool.
More structured control: Spotify describes users as setting “rules” for the playlist, and The Verge notes the point is to give users more direct control than standard algorithmic playlists.
Ongoing programming, not a one time output: Daily or weekly refresh turns the prompt into something you can keep running, similar in feel to an algorithmic show that updates on a schedule.
Safety, Trust, and Prompt Governance
Spotify does not publish full technical safeguards for Prompted Playlist in the announcement, but its earlier AI Playlist beta post is clearer that Spotify blocks some non music prompts and uses measures around offensive prompts. That matters because prompt driven systems can be pushed into unwanted territory unless guardrails are enforced.
How Spotify’s approach compares with other prompt based music curation
Spotify is not alone here. The broader trend is that music platforms are turning prompts into a new interface for curation:
YouTube Music documents an “Ask Music” experience that uses AI to generate a custom station from text or voice prompts, and labels some results as “Mix created by AI”.
Amazon Music launched Maestro in beta in the US in 2024, also prompt driven, and says it blocks offensive language and inappropriate prompts.
Deezer introduced “Playlist with AI” as a beta feature in 2024, using text prompts to build playlists for a subset of paying subscribers.
Where Spotify is trying to stand out with Prompted Playlist is the combination of deeper personal history and scheduled refresh, effectively turning a prompt into a repeatable curation recipe.
TheDayAfterAI News
We are a leading AI-focused digital news platform, combining AI-generated reporting with human editorial oversight. By aggregating and synthesizing the latest developments in AI — spanning innovation, technology, ethics, policy and business — we deliver timely, accurate and thought-provoking content.