Spotify Running Mode helps match tunes to tempo

The AI-powered feature provides preset playlists that you can curate around BPM, music taste, and workout duration.

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.

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.