New year, new upgrades – here are 5 improvements I want Spotify to make in 2026

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2. Audio Streaming
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New year, new upgrades – here are 5 improvements I want Spotify to make in 2026 Features By Rowan Davies published 17 January 2026

At least give us lyric translations Spotify

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Spotify was on one hell of a roll in 2025, pumping out one exciting new product launch after the next from Spotify Mix to the long-awaited Spotify Lossless. It rounded off the year nicely with Spotify Wrapped 2025 - one of the best music recaps its done in recent years - and now I'm looking ahead at 2026.

Going forward, it's difficult to tell what's in store for Spotify this year, given the facelift that it's had over the past 12 months. But there's always room for improvement.

While I start diving right into the first month of 2026's year in music, I'm also reflecting on what new features I want from Spotify. Some of them are reasonable requests, but others are my own personal (albeit unrealistic) yearnings.

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1. Lyric translations and synchronization upgrades

(Image credit: Future)

When it comes to lyric features across music streaming services, Spotify’s is by all means one of the weakest for a number of reasons.

For starters, not every song on Spotify has synchronized lyrics, and even the ones that do often run into synchronization issues. As for newly-released songs, you have to wait at least a few days before you can view their accompanying lyrics, whereas services like Apple Music are very on top of this – plus, it offers lyric translations.

Spotify has been falling behind on the lyrics front for a while, so it’s time to make some changes.

2. Profile customization

Musicboard (pictured right) allows you to select custom gifs and picture for your boarders with its Pro tier (Image credit: Future)

Spotify prides itself on its music personalization features, but I wish I could have more creative freedom with how my account profile looks. With platforms such as Letterboxd, and even the lesser-known Musicboard, paying users have the freedom to add a pop of personality to their profiles. Now, imagine that for Spotify.

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At the moment, there’s nothing eye-catching about the current state of Spotify profiles, it’s a simple format displaying your profile picture and short catalog of your recently made playlists, and it could do with some zhuzhing. Perhaps some custom profile frames and music artist banners are the next step?

3. Lift restrictions on playlist and album pins

(Image credit: Future)

Pinning playlists and albums to your Library is a godsend for quickly finding what you want to listen to instead of scrolling through Spotify’s cluttered interface. It’s a helpful feature that I’ve come to use quite often, but you can only pin four playlists and albums at a time – a huge inconvenience for users who yo-yo between multiple playlists.

4. Group chats for Messages

(Image credit: Spotify)

Earlier this week Spotify unveiled two big upgrades to its Messages tab, bringing a Request to Jam button and real-time listening activity to chats. Messages hasn’t been my favorite of Spotify's new features, but the possibility of group chats coming to the service is interesting.

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• Spotify could finally be about to roll out this much-loved Apple Music feature – but not for everyone

I use other platforms for group chats of course, but adding them to Spotify Messages would create a designated space for users to discuss all things music with their friends, and share song recommendations and new artists without having to take the conversation elsewhere.

5. SongDNA

(Image credit: X.com / Jane Manchun Wong)

I do more than use Spotify for music streaming, I like to use it to learn more about the geniuses behind my favorite songs. Spotify’s song credits have been a great way to familiarize myself with songwriters and producers, but it could be building this by taking inspiration from Tidal Credits, which offers a way to discover new music by navigating through the credits of songs.

Back in October, reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong noticed a feature called ‘SongDNA’ in a code in the Spotify app, sharing it to social media before Spotify quickly removed it. So what does it actually do?

Apparently, SongDNA will come in the form of a visual mind map allowing you to see what other songs artists have appeared on, and will feature the whole network behind the songs. Despite Spotify’s radio silence on the matter, we’re pretty convinced that SongDNA is very much in the works – now it’s just a waiting game.

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Rowan DaviesSocial Links NavigationEditorial Associate

Rowan is an Editorial Associate and Apprentice Writer for TechRadar. A recent addition to the news team, he is involved in generating stories for topics that spread across TechRadar's categories. His interests in audio tech and knowledge in entertainment culture help bring the latest updates in tech news to our readers. 

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