How to use Spotify Blends on iPhone — make your music playlists sociable

Spotify Blends are a wonderful way to connect with friends, broaden your horizons, and show off all the underground music you listen to. But being one of many ways that Spotify will make playlists for you, it can be a little confusing to find initially.

Released in 2021 and presumably an effect of long lockdowns and time away from family and friends, Blends are a very charming little idea that help you feel a little closer to those who are far away.

You can wait for your friends to invite you to their blend or take the initiative to make a blend with nine of your coworkers. Being one of many unique features that Apple Music hasn’t copied just yet, it’s one of the best conversation pieces for any Spotify user. Here’s what you should know about Spotify Blends and why the expected iOS 17 changes to Apple Music aren’t quite enough.

How to make a Spotify Blend on iPhone and iPad

A Spotify Blend is a collaborative playlist automatically created by Spotify to blend the genres and style of your music collection with your friends. It finds songs you have in common and tries to give a middle ground between those that aren’t.

When you are in the Spotify app on your iPhone or iPad, you simply have to click on the search bar in the bottom middle of the screen. From here:

Click on Made For You in the “Browse all” section. Click on Create a Blend in the “Made for Us” sectionClick Invite to invite your friends to a blend
Send the link to a friend and the Blend will be automatically made for you

A picture showing Spotify on an iPhone screen

(Image credit: Future / Spotify)

Frequently Asked Questions

How to remove a song from a Spotify Blend

Bored of hearing that same tune every single day? It’s easy to eliminate songs you and your friends don’t like or don’t want to listen to, by clicking the three dots next a song, then hitting Remove from this playlist

Can you add songs to a Spotify Blend?

No, you cannot add songs to a Spotify Blend. As it updates frequently, you shouldn’t get bored of it too easily. If you want to add your own songs, you may be better off making a collaborative playlist.

How to make a Spotify Blend with multiple people

Once you have your Spotify Blend link, you can just send it on to multiple people and your blend will be created.

What are the benefits of a Spotify Blend?

Some music just sounds better in your earphones. Due to the isolating nature of it, you have less of an opportunity to show your friends and family. Spotify Blend is a great way to listen to music that your friends like but you may not usually listen to.

How often do Spotify Blends update?

Spotify Blends update daily including new music you and your friends have listened to. If it doesn’t update, there’s a chance you are having connection issues.

Do you need premium for a Spotify Blend?

You don’t need premium to make or participate in a Spotify Blend. This being said, you will still receive ads in shared playlists.

One more thing… Is Apple Music in iOS 17 catching up?

Spotify has managed to secure its spot as one of the best music apps out there, partially due to innovations like Spotify Blend. Despite paying artists over double for each song stream, Apple has under half the paid subscribers that Spotify has. You have to pay to use Apple Music, and each year, users are left out in the figurative cold when Spotify Wrapped comes out. All the pretty graphs showing the ridiculous amount of times you listened to Have a Nice Life’s Deathconsciousness have noticeable Spotify branding, and this organic FOMO marketing leaves many wondering why they pay the Apple Music fee each month.

Music is a great connector. Even if you come from different backgrounds and don’t share the same common knowledge, our ability to connect over music grounds so many humans around the world. Spotify makes sharing music an occasion. Spotify Blend automatically adds multiple different music tastes together and aims to find common ground. Comparatively, Apple Music comes across as rather insular.

This being said, the iOS 17 update for iPhones, coming later this year, comes with some changes to Apple Music. As well as small quality-of-life improvements like a better UI and crossfade feature, it is finally introducing collaborative playlists. With this, you can connect to another friend’s playlist digitally and add your own songs. You can add extra people in at any point, see who added songs, and even react to new song choices.

But collaborative playlists have been on Spotify for years and can be accessed without paying extra for the feature. The upgrades to Apple Music look interesting, but its competition has been doing a lot more for a lot less this whole time. Apple Music, as our Twitter account states, is an excellent service, but Spotify does a better job at connecting people. Apple Music is a means to an end, whereas Spotify is often an experience in itself.