Spotify Running Mode helps match tunes to tempo

Spotify has introduced a new Running Mode feature that makes it easier to curate playlists around your workout goals, music tastes, and desired beats per minute (BPM). The aim is to help you “spend less time hunting for the right music and more time moving,” according to Spotify’s announcement, providing customizable running presets and optional coaching features.

Running Mode is an AI-powered experience that builds on personalization capabilities that were introduced with Prompted Playlists last year, with Spotify finding that fitness-based prompts have been some of the most popular uses for that feature. It requires a Premium subscription and can be found under the Fitness hub that Spotify launched in April. It’s available starting today on Spotify’s iOS app, but only for users in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden for now.

There are 25 curated running playlist presets to choose from, which can be further customized around your preferred music genres, workout duration, BPM, and training method — including interval, steady, and pyramid. Running Mode also includes optional audio prompts in English that provide “timely cues and motivation without getting in the way of your music,” according to Spotify.

This isn’t the first experience that Spotify has made specifically for runners. It launched a Spotify Running feature in 2015 that was also designed to help you match music to your running pace, before retiring it in 2018. There is a notable distinction between that and the new Running Mode, however — Spotify Running used your phone hardware to automatically detect your pace and react by playing music that synchronizes with it, whereas Running Mode needs you to proactively define your own workout playlist requirements from the start.