Spotify’s New Offline Backup Playlists Will Be a Game Changer for Frequent Flyers

Spotify announced a new feature Thursday that will completely change how I fly. The music streaming app will feature Offline Backup: an offline playlist automatically generated based on your recently streamed tracks.

Yes, Spotify already allows offline playlists, but users must manually download every track that goes in. The new feature will ensure an offline playlist has been auto-created for you. It will appear on your feed like a regular playlist, and you can add it to your library, too.

Offline Backup was released in beta last year and has officially rolled out today for Premium Spotify users on iOS and Android, including Android Auto and Apple CarPlay worldwide.

I eagerly look forward to how much time and effort this feature will save. I wasn’t a fan of offline playlists simply because manually hand-picking everything I’d want to listen to on an hours-long flight would be my last priority while packing for a trip. Also, music tastes and song preferences are ever-evolving, so having a single offline playlist for every flight is difficult.

The best thing about Offline Backup is that it knows what you’ve been listening to lately and will evolve with your music taste. Feeding your preferences in real-time will ensure that it caters to your streaming choices. It also allows filtering, so you can easily sort through the playlist by looking up the artist, genre, or even mood.

If your app is up to date, Offline Backup will automatically show up on your feed. Spotify requires only that you have recently listened to more than five songs and have offline listening enabled. You can do the latter by going into Settings on the Spotify app > Data Saving > Offline or Storage. Then, navigate to the Offline Listening toggle on this page and turn it on.

Spotify has recently been experimenting with hands-off, minimal-effort playlist creation. Just last week, its AI playlist builder became available in the US, which allows users to create a custom playlist based on a prompt. The app was seen toying with the feature in October of last year, and it was released in beta in April this year and for the US, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand in September.

Rewinding a little more will take you back to one of the earliest Spotify AI features, the AI DJ, unveiled in August 2023. Though that wasn’t the biggest hit among the community (we weren’t the biggest fans of it either), we’re looking forward to seeing how helpful Offline Backup actually proves to be.