Spotify’s Song Psychic Is Your New Favorite Fortune Teller

Spotify is no stranger to releasing fun, sharable features that break the internet. At the end of every year, the platform rounds up your listening stats and breaks down exactly what your most played songs and artists are in Spotify Wrapped. In recent years, they've also added extra features that reveal everything from your Spotify Sound Town to your Movie Soundtrack.

Now, Spotify is upping the ante with a brand new feature called Song Psychic. What is though, and how do you access it?

Spotify is rolling out a new feature called Song Psychic that will allow its customers to ask Spotify questions and get answers in the form of music. The addition builds on the success of Spotify’s personalized, year-end review called Wrapped, which offers clever ways of turning Spotify’s music data into insights designed for social sharing. But in the case of Song Psychic, the goal is not to look back at your listening history, but to leverage Spotify’s understanding of music and song titles to answer a range of personal questions — like those you might ask a psychic or Magic 8 Ball just for fun.

To use the feature, you can visit spotify.com/songpsychic on your mobile device or scan the QR code on Song Psychic’s website.

Once in the new experience, you can pick from a variety of broader categories, like School, Friends and Family, Love, Career, Life’s Greatest Mysteries, My Future, Myself, Style and Lunch. (The latter can help you decide what to have for lunch!)

Within each section, there are a number of pre-populated questions you can tap on to get answers, like “Am I the drama?,” “Does my crush like me back?,” “Will I get a raise?,” “Should I go to prom?” and many others. Or, you can start typing your own question in the provided box and the app will start offering suggestions of others you could ask.

When you have entered your question, the “Song Psychic” asks you to press your finger on the screen, then colors swirl around as mystical music hums in the background before your answer is revealed in the form of a song.

For example, if you asked if someone has a crush on you, it might answer with a song titled “You Wish” (ouch!) or something more affirmative. Some of the answers are a bit mysterious. Just as a Magic 8 Ball sometimes refuses to answer a question with its “Ask Again Later” response, Spotify’s Song Psychic may respond with an answer of its own, like “Why?” instead of directly responding. Or it could offer a vague time frame, like “Eventually” (a song by Tame Impala). All its responses are in the form of musical tracks, however.

You don’t actually have to press your finger on the screen to get your response — that’s just a gimmick. But your answer is shareable by tapping on a button below, which pops up a built-in sharing sheet for posting the answer to WhatsApp, Instagram Stories, IG DMs, Messenger, Facebook/Facebook Stories, Snapchat, X, Messages and more.

Though Spotify doesn’t advertise the experience as being AI-powered, it does give you the feeling of asking an all-knowing AI chatbot a question. (The company says it works by matching specific keywords in song titles and questions.) On its FAQ, however, the company notes that its answers are “generated entirely at random,” meaning it’s not leveraging your personal data to come to its conclusions. The experience is also designed for “entertainment only,” the site warns, and “should not be considered a serious source of advice on any issue whatsoever” — an addition that a lawyer surely forced Spotify to include.

There’s a bit of a lag in navigating the app and getting responses at times — so it’s nowhere near as fast as something like ChatGPT. We also got stuck on a screen and the back button wouldn’t work during one of our tests. Still, the experience can be quite fun and would likely increase users’ time spent in the Spotify mobile app, if it were better advertised. The Song Psychic wasn’t immediately available through its own hub in the app, though, so you’d have to keep returning to the website to get it to pop it up.

Song Psychic is available to Spotify’s free and Premium subscribers in 64 markets and in 21 languages, the company says.

The company confirmed that Song Psychic is one of a number of initiatives designed to “celebrate the spirit of Wrapped year-round.” Already, it’s debuted various surprise, original interactive experiences for fans and artists, from the New Years-inspired “Playlist In a Bottle” to “My Top Five” artist experiences with Kendrick Lamar, The Weeknd, ROSALÍA, BTS and Taylor Swift.

Spotify is leaning into the mystery with the launch of Song Psychic – a mystical experience to help answer all of life’s burning questions through music. Here’s how it works:

• Visit spotify.com/songpsychic on your mobile device.

• Choose a category. Users will pick from a list of nine topics – School, Style, Lunch, Love, Career, Myself, My Future, Friends & Family, and Life’s Greatest Mysteries. Users can even have Song Psychic read their mind.

• Ask your question. Users can pick from a variety of pre-populated questions, like “Should I go on this date?”, “Should I book a vacation?” or even “What should I have for lunch?”

• Await the future. After selecting a question, a contemplation screen will be shown while Song Psychic finds the perfect song to answer your question.

• Listen and share. When the answer appears, users have the option to listen to the song on Spotify, ask another question, and share their results on social!

As it happens, Spotify listeners aren’t just turning to the stars for cosmic guidance – they’re also turning to the music of artists like Stevie Nicks, Lana Del Ray and Florence + The Machine to convene with the future. 

• Across the world, listeners have created over 250,000 psychic-related playlists on Spotify. Some of the most popular songs added to those playlists are: 

• “Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac 

• “telepatía” by Kali Uchis

• “Stargirl Interlude” by The Weeknd, Lana Del Rey

• “Cosmic Love” by Florence + The Machine

• “Space Song” by Beach House

• “Crystal” by Stevie Nicks

To bring the campaign to life, Spotify also worked with Baby Tate (video here) – check out a quote from the artist below about her love of the new feature.

Lean into the musical mystery and see what answers Song Psychic manifests for you, and head to Spotify’s For the Record for more details. You can find assets for any coverage HERE. Let me know if you have questions or are interested in covering!

March 01, 2024