With the success of Beats 1 on Apple Music it seems Spotify are joining the online radio bandwagon with In Residence playlists.

Spotify have released a series of new artist-curated playlists that seem to follow the style of radio shows. Spotify’s new “In Residence” playlists currently feature curated selections from Sex Pistol Steve Jones, Tonga (made up of Murkage and The Streets’ Mike Skinner), J and T from Jungle and Big Narstie.

The playlists feature 15-16 songs selected by the artists and are interspersed with discussion from the artists. The playlist’s songs are available to everyone however the artist’s talking segments appear to only be available for Spotify Premium users, making this the first exclusive content for premium users. Premium exclusive content has been discussed by Spotify for a few months now.

Whilst Spotify’s In Residence  playlists aren’t live like Apple’s Beats 1 it seems that Spotify plan to regularly update the playlists monthly, with the artists recurring. It is also very early days for the playlists with the In Residence profile having only gained close to 500 followers at the time of writing.

Although it may not be live Spotify’s In Residence radio show playlists gain the advantage of the listener being able to select whichever track they want, skip past the artist talking or skip straight to them, shuffle the play order and do anything you can with a regular playlist or album.

This is an interesting move for Spotify who, since the launch of Apple Music, have lauded their algorithmic playlist generation in particular in the use of the hugely popular Discover Weekly. Now it seems Spotify want to explore the best of both worlds by introducing these human-curated playlists.

There has currently been no official announcement from Spotify for their In Residence playlists however the cover for each playlist features “A Spotify Original” tag. We will update the story with any new information as and when we hear any news from Spotify about the latest in their new additions for the service.

Beats 1 has been the runaway success of Apple Music so far, featuring world famous DJ hosts like Zane Lowe as well as guest shows from artists like Drake and St. Vincent. With Apple Music’s base service receiving it’s fair share of criticism the majority of praise for the service seems to be going to their global, online radio station.