Blog1 min read
On the playlist cover image
Most playlist covers are stock photos doing work the music may not deliver. The blocks of colour here are deliberate.
Every playlist on Spotify has a cover image. Most are stock photos — candles, headphones, somebody's silhouette at a window. The image is doing a lot of work to suggest a mood the music may or may not deliver.
The covers for the rooms here are deliberately quiet. A small block of the room's accent colour, the room's number, no photograph. Partly this is about restraint; partly it's because a photograph commits the playlist to a setting in the listener's head, and the room is meant to be wider than any single image.
There's also a small technical reason. Photos compress badly at the small sizes streaming services use for now-playing widgets. They look fine at album size but tired at the size of a notification on a watch face. A solid colour survives both.
None of this is a rule for anyone else's playlists. Photographs can absolutely work — there are great photo covers out there. The five blocks of colour here are a deliberate choice for a site that's mostly built out of restraint.