On Wednesday, Spotify announced new features designed to showcase the people behind users’ favorite music, including producers, engineers, songwriters, background vocalists, and more. The company will also release tools that show how songs are connected and what inspired them.
The second set of tools is showcased in a new, interactive feature called SongDNA, which shows which songs are being sampled in a given track, who has covered the tune, and what other projects the song’s collaborators may have been involved in.
TechCrunch reported in October that Spotify was developing the SongDNA feature as a way to help users discover music through a song’s credits, after references to the feature were spotted in the app’s code by reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong. With SongDNA, Spotify users could explore the other projects that the artists, musicians, and others who worked on a track are involved with.
Previously, the Song Credits feature had only featured the topline performance, songwriting, and production credits.
References to the sampled music, meanwhile, come from the online community-built database WhoSampled, which Spotify has acquired. Notably, the streaming service TIDAL also offers interactive credits that let users explore music through the contributors behind the songs.
Spotify has also planned a feature called “About the song,” which will allow listeners to explore swipeable cards in the “Now Playing” view. Those cards will offer details like what inspired the song, the stories behind the music, the cultural impact, and more. These stories are sourced from third-party resources, which will be linked in the cards.
This type of background information about music is something Spotify has offered in previous years, when it partnered with lyrics site Genius on a feature that offered details on certain tracks’ backstories. However, that feature was limited to those stories Genius had in its database. The upcoming feature will link out to various places on the web, screenshots show, including informational sites like Wikipedia, as well as news sites.
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Spotify says the expanded Song Credits will roll out starting Wednesday on mobile devices and will come to desktop in the months ahead.
SongDNA and About the Song will only be available to Premium subscribers. However, these features won’t launch until early next year, initially as Spotify for Artists Preview. This will allow those involved with the music to have a chance to preview the features first and ensure the credits are accurate before they’re made available to the wider public.
