Spotify’s new feature rewinds your music tastes to the past

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Discover your 1960's playlist with Taste Rewind.
Discover your 1960's playlist with Taste Rewind.
Photo: Spotify

Spotify’s software engineers have cooked up a new feature that lets you rewind your music tastes to see what they would have been like if you were born in a different generation.

The unannounced feature was discovered by VentureBeat this morning after one of Spotify’s engineers posted a public link to the Rewind service this morning. You can’t find Rewind in the Spotify app (yet?), but Rewind playlists can be imported into your library.

To rewind your music tastes to the past, simply go to Spotify Rewind and pick your three favorite artists displayed on the page. Spotify’s algorithm will then automatically build playlists for what your tastes would have been in the OO’s, 90’s, 80’s, 70’s, 60’s and 20’s.

I chose Kanye, Lil Wayne, and N.W.A. in my test of rewind and I’m absolutely loving the soulful 1960’s playlist it cooked up with Bill Withers, Isaac Hayes, The O’Jays and a bunch of jams I probably would have never discovered on my own. Best of all, you can try it even if you’re not a paid subscriber.

Rewind isn’t without it’s flaws. The number of artists you can choose from are sometimes limited or it’ll pick ones out of your library that I haven’t listened too. Other times it would populate playlists with just two or three songs instead . Once it’s more robust and available within the app, it could be a great tool you might even use daily.

 

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