Spotify has been spotted developing a “SongDNA” feature that would allow users to discover music through the credits — the writers, collaborators, vocalists, engineers, lyricists, producers, composers, and others who worked on a given track or album.
The feature was discovered in the app’s code by reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong, who was able to generate screenshots of how SongDNA would appear in the app. Based on her findings, SongDNA would introduce a visual experience where you could essentially navigate through the credits, see how people were connected to each other, and explore their various works.
For instance, Wong showed how one artist, Rei Ami from the “KPop Demon Hunters” cast, had lent her voice to other tracks beyond those from the movie.
If Spotify releases the feature to the public, it could challenge the streaming service TIDAL’s interactive credits, which also lets you explore music through the contributors behind the songs you love. The addition could be useful for music industry pros looking for collaborators, as well as anyone wanting to learn more about the people who work behind the scenes in music creation.
Shortly after posting screenshots to social media, Wong said Spotify’s app was updated to remove references to the SongDNA feature. Reached for comment, Spotify declined to share further details but did not issue a denial.
Following Wong’s post, another reverse engineer and technologist, Chris Messina, was able to confirm SongDNA’s existence by finding references to the feature within the app’s code. According to Messina, the lines of code suggest the feature could be used to reveal the network of contributors behind songs, allowing users to explore more of their work, he said.
While some wondered if SongDNA would be Spotify’s answer to Pandora’s Music Genome Project, it appears that’s not quite the case. The Genome Project uses hundreds of different details, or “traits,” corresponding to a particular characteristic of the music to classify tracks and determine how they’re related.
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SongDNA, for now at least, appears to be more focused on just the people behind the music, not the music itself.
