SoundCloud Takes on Spotify by Adding Weekly Personalized Playlist

Stepping up to the competition of other major music streaming services, SoundCloud launched its SoundCloud Weekly playlist on Monday, enlisting the help of rapper Desiigner for a comedic video announcement to do so.

The algorithm-driven playlist is set to update every Monday with user-specific track and artist recommendations, similar to Spotify’s Discover Weekly.

Discover Weekly launched in 2015 and quickly grew to have major influence over what Spotify’s listeners were streaming each day. Because of its often independent, creator-led system, SoundCloud has amassed the largest catalog of the streaming services, boasting 180 million tracks from 30 million creators. When compared to Spotify’s 35 million, SoundCloud Weekly’s algorithm will be sorting through a much larger pool of artists to bring recommendations to listeners each week.

“SoundCloud has the largest, most diverse music catalog ever assembled. SoundCloud Weekly draws from our global creator community to deliver a simple, personalized music experience that connects more creators with new listeners than ever before,” said Kerry Trainer, CEO of SoundCloud, in a statement. “Our commitment to giving more creators more ways to be discovered is why what’s next in music is first on SoundCloud.”

The streaming service is a few years behind its competitors when it comes to exploring this type of playlist curation, so the verdict is still out as to how much of an effect this will really have on user behavior.

You can check out SoundCloud Weekly for yourself here.