In the hyper-competitive world of streaming music services, personalization and intelligent suggestions reign supreme. Those features are hallmarks of Apple's just-launched Music service, and others such as Pandora and Google Play Music hang their hats on the ability to serve up the right music tailored just for you. Spotify, for its part, has enhanced its intelligent music suggestions this year with its new Now feature that provides a variety of playlists, podcasts, or video clips based on the time of day and your personal preferences. Today, it's taking that one step further with Discover Weekly, a personalized playlist for each Spotify user that gets updated on a weekly basis.

Discover Weekly is based on music you like and what other people like you like

Spotify says the Discover Weekly playlist is built based on the music that you listen to in addition to what other, similar users have been listening to. It's designed to surface the lesser-known tracks and deep cuts, as opposed to just being a playlist of the most popular songs out right now. It's available at the top of each user's Playlist folder.

I had a chance to check out the Discover Weekly playlist ahead of launch. It served up 30 tracks totaling almost two and a half hours of music that ranged from dad rock, to sad rock, to hipper chillwave tracks. Some of the artists were ones that I'm closely familiar with, while others were complete unknowns to me. But all of the songs were new to me, either completely so or different versions of songs I'd heard before. From my experience, Discover Weekly fulfilled its mission of delivering songs I hadn't heard before, but would likely enjoy.

I'm a fairly heavy user of streaming music services, listening to Spotify anywhere from four to 10 hours a day, so there's plenty of material for Spotify to build a custom playlist from. Other, more casual users might not have the same experience. And I've only heard one playlist from Discover Weekly thus far — subsequent ones might not hit the mark as well.

Spotify says that it will take a few weeks to a month for it to compile a Discover Weekly playlist for new users, and it will change based on a user's listening habits. It will be updated every Monday morning, ideally in time for the commute to work. Discover Weekly playlists can be shared like any other in Spotify, and other users can even subscribe to your Discover Weekly list if they so wish.

It may not be quite as extensive as Apple Music's For You section, but Discover Weekly should serve as a good place to find those deep cuts and hidden gems you might not otherwise hear.