By Mike Romero
Photos Courtesy of Spotify
For decades, one of the most sacred rituals of listening to music happened in the liner notes with tiny text columns and the quiet thrill of seeing who actually made the songs you loved. Before streaming platforms became the dominant way we experience music, fans learned about producers, engineers, and collaborators by reading album booklets while the record spun.
Now, Spotify is trying to bring that experience back. The company recently rolled out a suite of new features designed to spotlight the people and creative networks behind recorded music. Expanded Song Credits, SongDNA, and About the Song aim to help listeners better understand how the music they love actually gets made.
Spotify’s expanded Song Credits feature will now display a broader list of contributors, including engineers, additional producers, and other collaborators who historically haven’t always been visible in streaming metadata. The rollout began on mobile and has expanded to desktop in the recent months.
The more ambitious feature is SongDNA, an interactive tool that visually maps connections between songs through collaborators, samples, and cover versions. Powered in part by WhoSampled’s database, the feature gives listeners a way to trace a track’s lineage and influences in real time.
If expanded credits answer, “Who made this?” SongDNA answers “Where did this come from?”
Spotify is also launching About the Song, a feature that presents swipeable story cards explaining inspiration, cultural context, and behind-the-scenes details. The goal is to give fans a deeper emotional entry point into the music.
This is a series of small shifts with big implications.
Streaming made music more accessible than ever, but it also flattened some of the storytelling around creation. These new tools attempt to restore that missing layer.