Once your bags are packed and your gas tank is full, one vital aspect of planning a road trip remains: figuring out how to stay entertained on the drive. You might have some audiobooks or podcasts downloaded to help fill the hours, but at the end of the day there's nothing better than that perfect playlist of tunes that has the power to turn your road trip into an upbeat movie montage.
Luckily, the process of compiling the perfect mix for your drive just got considerably easier thanks to Spotify, whose new Soundtrack Your Ride feature works surprisingly well.
Music Up, Windows Down
This new feature is as simple as it is interactive. A map tool allows you to choose your point of departure and final destination, thereby calculating the length of said road trip. Then, you take a quiz to further customize your playlist. Questions touch on who you're traveling with (solo, friends, partner, kids, pets), your favorite genre (pop, rock, hip hop, and others are all represented), the vibe you want to create (mellow, sing-alongs, pedal to the metal), your ultimate driving song, the kind of car you'll be driving (there's even an electric option), and whether you're cool with explicit lyrics.
My playlist — for the experiment, I said I'd be driving from Denver to Santa Fe with pets in a sedan and wanted a mellow vibe — pulled heavily from artists I already listen to and was genuinely solid not only for the song selection but also for how closely it adhered to the parameters I chose. Songs like "Headache," "Shades of Cool," "Come Find Me," and most of the other 57 songs Spotify curated for me are mellow, and I would absolutely listen to them while road-tripping with my cats.
If you want to see how well it works for yourself, go here and start listening.
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