Built for big libraries
Stop building playlists.
Start rating songs.
You love music. You also have four thousand liked songs, a recommender that keeps handing back last week, and genre labels somebody else picked. notch.fm measures the one thing streaming never asks about - what you actually think of a song - and turns your library into something you can just ask.
150 ratings free · no card needed · your Spotify tokens never reach the browser
Powered by Spotify. An independent app - not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Spotify - that runs on your own Spotify account.
The difference
Listening time is not taste.
Every recommender you have ever used is counting minutes. Minutes measure convenience - the album you left on while you worked, the track that happened to be third in a playlist, the song your commute is exactly long enough for. None of that is an opinion, and no amount of it adds up to one.
notch.fm asks for the opinion directly. A number out of ten, in the two seconds it takes to press one key while the song is still playing. That single act carries more signal than a year of passive plays, because it is the only thing in the system you actually meant.
What a recommender sees
Plays this month
- Fits your commute exactly142 plays
- Track 3 of an album you left on119 plays
- The one from the advert94 plays
- The song you would defend in an argument30 plays
Your favourite song is at the bottom of this chart. It always is, because you save it for when it counts.
What notch sees
Your score, out of 10
- The song you would defend in an argument10
- Track 3 of an album you left on6
- The one from the advert4
- Fits your commute exactly5
Same four songs. Completely different order - and this one is the order you would actually pick.
And when it is wrong, you win.
Spotify says the song is indie pop. You know it is post-punk. Change it - and it stays changed, in your library, in every queue built afterwards, in every search you run for the rest of the year. Notch is honest about which values it guessed for you and which ones you set, and one keystroke turns a guess into a decision. Your library becomes a record of your judgement instead of a report on your habits.
What you get
An opinion, then everything that follows from it.
Rate
Two seconds. One key.
A score from 1 to 10, entered with a single keystroke while the song is still playing. No modal, no five stars where four of them mean the same thing, no thumb. A 7 and a 9 are different songs and you want different things from each - now the app knows that too. Miss the end of a track and a twenty second grace window still catches it.
Press 9. That is the whole interaction.
Tag
Four axes, plus whatever you want.
One rating cannot answer “what do I want right now?” - that question has parts. The four axes are deliberately orthogonal: a drum & bass track and a folk track can both be vocal, and acoustic cuts across every genre. Then there is a fifth axis that ships with no vocabulary at all, because every word on it is one you coined.
Ask
One box. Plain English. It does the thing.
Type an instruction and a queue is built and started. Type a description and the matching songs land in front of you. Type a question and notchbot answers it from your own numbers - only ever your own numbers, never a confident guess. And it always shows how it read your words, so you can argue with the reading instead of rewriting the sentence.
- play upbeat country rock
- songs I rated 9 or better
- shuffle my 10s
- queue something loud for the gym
- what is my average score?
Queues and playlists, built from your scores
Ask for something and the queue is assembled from the songs you rated highest, band-shuffled so it is not the same twenty tracks in the same order. Any queue can be saved to Spotify as a real playlist.
Comments pinned to a moment
Write a note at 2:14 and it stays at 2:14, for everyone who plays that song. The drop, the lyric, the bit where the drums come in - the conversation happens where it belongs instead of under the whole track.
XP, 50 levels and 25 badges
Rating and tagging pay XP, because the honest problem with a library of four thousand songs is the first afternoon. Badges mark the milestones that actually change what the app can do for you.
A feed of people, not an algorithm
Follow friends and see what they rated, what they superliked and what they argued with. One superlike a day, spent to pin a song at 10 - scarcity is what makes it mean anything.
Community charts
Top-rated songs across everyone who opted in, by day, week, month, year or all time, filterable by mood or genre. Averages, not play counts, so a chart position is a verdict rather than a budget.
See it move
Ten seconds of the loop.
Rate what is playing on the left; ask for what you want on the right. Both panels below are drawings rather than screenshots - but the squares, the chips, the glass and the type are the ones the app actually ships.
Rate what is playing
An animation of the Now Playing screen: a song plays, a score of 8 out of 10 is entered with one key, mood, vibe and sound tags are added, and the rating earns 12 XP.
Ask for what you want
An animation of the search box: the sentence “play upbeat country rock I rated 8 or better” is typed, the box shows how it read the words, and then it builds and starts a queue.
Pricing
Free until your library outgrows it.
Free is a real tier, not a trailer - rate, tag, queue and share on it for as long as you like. Premium lifts the ceilings.
Free
$0/mo
No card. Nothing expires.
- Rate up to 150 songs
- Up to 10 custom categories per tag type
- One playlist, up to 25 songs
- Private playlists only
- 5 AI requests an hour across search, notchbot and queues
- Read comments; posting is Premium
- Follow up to 5 people
- 1 superlike a day
Premium
Recommended$4.99/mo
For when 150 songs stops being enough.
- Unlimited ratings
- Unlimited custom categories
- Unlimited playlists, any length
- Publish playlists to your profile
- Unlimited AI requests
- All 25 badges and the level track
- Post and reply to comments
- Follow as many people as you like
- Superlikes stay 1 a day - scarcity is the point
The 150 counts only the ratings you set yourself - the profile notch seeds for you on day one is free and unlimited. Upgrade, downgrade or cancel from Settings whenever you like; your ratings are yours either way, and the JSON export never goes behind the paywall.
Attribution
Powered by Spotify
Music, cover art and playback come from Spotify. Scores, tags and everything built on them are notch.fm's.
- notch.fm is independent. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Spotify, and it is not made or reviewed by them. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.
- You need your own Spotify account. notch.fm hosts no music and sells no music. It reads your library through the Spotify Web API and plays through Spotify, on your account, and you can revoke that access from Spotify at any time.
- A free Spotify account is enough to rate and tag. Starting, pausing and skipping a track needs Spotify Premium - Spotify's plan, not notch.fm's - because that is who their API allows it for. The buttons say so rather than failing quietly.
Your library already knows your taste.
It has never once been asked. Connect Spotify, rate a hundred songs on a Sunday, and spend the rest of the year just asking for what you want.
Create accountnotch.fm asks Spotify only for what it uses: reading your library, and - when you press the button - saving a like or a playlist. Revoke it any time from Spotify.