Summary
- About the Song is a Now Playing card that provides details like song inspirations and behind-the-scenes stories for the current track.
- Stories are summarized from third-party sources.
- The feature is currently in beta and is available to Premium users on Android and iOS in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia.
Spotify has rolled out a ton of useful new features over the last couple of months, and that trend continues today with the announcement of About the Song. This aptly-named new feature “explores the meaning behind the music you’re hearing.”
What is About the Song?
About the Song is meant to provide a deeper look at tracks. Displayed information can include the inspiration behind songs, stories about how tracks were written or produced, how collaborating artists met, and the song’s cultural impact. The info shows up in a small card on the Now Playing page, right below the lyrics, and you can swipe the card to see different details.
Spotify isn’t entirely clear on how the information is gathered — it simply says the stories are summarized from third-party sources. Presumably, there’s some AI action happening behind the scenes to pull the summaries together.
The card has a See more button that will expand the card and show you the sources used. You can also provide feedback directly on the card, which should hopefully help ensure accuracy.
Other new Spotify features
The streaming giant has been busy
Over the last few months, Spotify has launched a slew of new and updated features:
- Lyric updates: Spotify launched lyric translations globally and began offering offline lyrics. It also added lyrics to the top of the Now Playing page, so you no longer have to scroll to see them.
- Page Match: Page Match is super cool. You scan a page from a physical book or ebook with your phone camera, and Spotify finds the exact spot in the audiobook version so you can pick right up.
- Prompted Playlists: These are AI-generated playlists. You feed Spotify a natural-language prompt, and it spits out a playlist it thinks matches. We think this is one of Spotify’s best tools.
- Lossless audio: Lossless audio was finally launched on Spotify in September of last year, and recently expanded to several new markets. Make sure you use wired headphones for the best effect!
About the Song is currently in beta, but is rolling out widely to Premium users on Android and iOS. It currently only supports English and is initially limited to the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia (though I’d expect a wider rollout if it proves popular).
