Discover Weekly not cutting it for you anymore? Spotify-curated playlists not updating frequently enough? I hear you. Thankfully, I have two apps to share that have become some of my most-used in the last several months for their fun and convenience with which to find new music. Allow me to put you on:
DISCZ
Discz focuses on providing users with new music recommendations through a dating-app style format. Simply log into the app with Spotify, then head to the “Recs” tab. From there, swipe right on a track you like, or left on one you don’t. It’s Tinder for music, minus the disappointment: a constant stream of new music recommendations, all formulated based on the music you currently have saved to your library. Each right-swiped song then gets added to a Spotify playlist the app generates. The algorithm will throw you a track you know on occasion, but I’ve found it’s a very dependable source of new selections across genres. My playlist has reached nearly thirty hours of music, all that I’ve generally never heard before.
Discz’ suggestions have since inspired deep dives both into newfound artists and those I’d been meaning to get into. From the latter category, Discz suggested I check out “Back to the Old House” by The Smiths, who went on to carry me through this frigid past winter. Sometimes you just need a push to get you fully enamored with a band. Or, in this case, a thirty-second snippet of Morrisey’s melancholic vocals coupled with an Andy Rourke bassline. I’d also recently strayed away from house music, until it led me right back into a new phase propelled by heaters from then new-to-me producers Baltra and Park Hye Jin. Find those and more in my Discz playlist below.
New social media features
Recently, the app unveiled an update bringing more social media functions to the platform. The home page now features trending mixes, in which users add songs matching a particular mood to then appear on the timelines of others. The explore page offers a “who to follow” section, where you can sync your contacts to find friends using the app, as well as areas detailing your top artists and tracks for the past month, three months, and all time. It’s really useful having all of these functions within one app, integrating the cool concepts introduced by web apps like StatsforSpotify and Receiptify and amplifying them. On Discz, you can save the top tracks from any of these time intervals into playlists with the tap of a button.
It can feel a bit clunky as the app is still in the early development stages, though it’s clear Discz is dedicated to providing a high-quality user experience with more updates sure to come. That aside, the playlist recommendations will certainly continue to be top-notch.
Music League
Gather a group of your fellow music-loving friends and download Music League, where you compete to come up with the tracks that best capture the feeling of a particular prompt. The game operates with a new category each round, and they’re entirely customizable; my group, for instance, has had milder rounds like “80s teen rom-com” and “songs to take a depression walk to” shift to spicier topics like “songs you wish could take a physical form and beat the sh*t out of you.”
One person commissions, adding in the number of song submissions allowed per player, as well as the amount of upvotes and downvotes you can dish out each round. Once everyone has submitted their allotted number of songs, the app compiles the anonymous submissions into a playlist and notifies the group of its homework assignment. Each player listens before the agreed-upon deadline and upvotes the songs they find best suit the descriptor, and downvotes one if necessary. We decided to implement a comment requirement for the songs we upvote to make it more fun.
in my experience
As post-grads, many of us live in different areas across the country and speak much less frequently than we did during school. This app has been such a blessing for us, getting to catch up via group chat while connecting through music again in a novel way. It’s fun to speculate which songs match up with which person, and you’ll come to find your friends will surprise you! Having each person’s individual take truly gives a holistic view of a particular genre or mood, as well as countless hours of listening material. The playlists Music League generates are among my favorites to listen to while working, and it surely beats the effort of curating your own.
I hope these suggestions have been helpful. Let me know your thoughts on these two apps in the comments!
