The Best Spotify Playlists You Should Be Listening To Right Now

The act of listening to music is pretty straightforward, but being a dedicated music fan takes a lot of work, because it requires answers to many questions: What’s the best way to listen to your music? How do you keep up with what’s current in music? How do you discover new music?

With the rise of streaming services like Spotify, the answers to these questions have become clear: Playlists. Spotify is filled with users (including Spotify themselves) who put in the effort to curate playlists that feature the right songs for the right mood, or perhaps what’s most current so you can be an informed fan. There are thousands and thousands of playlists, though, so let me help you out: Here are some of the best playlists that check a variety of boxes, that will keep you in the loop, and that will expose you to some great stuff you may not have discovered otherwise.

New Music Friday (Pop/Hip-Hop/Indie, by Spotify)

For the purposes of this guide, I’ll try to stay away from Spotify’s in-house playlists, not because they’re not excellent (they are), but because this is about discovery, and Spotify’s playlists are the most obvious picks that you could easily find on your own without my direction. That said, it’s also a good idea to rely on them to provide a regularly updated playlist of the new stuff that’s hitting their platform on a weekly basis. That means that their New Music Friday playlist is the most essential resource if you want to know what’s new every week.

Pop All Day (Pop, by Spotify)

Same story with this playlist: Spotify knows what their users are listening to, so their Pop All Day mix will always have the biggest hits of the moment conveniently collected in one place. You could listen to pop radio, or you can take control over your pop and just throw this playlist on shuffle. Your call.