Spotify’s AI is no match for a real DJ

At the consequence of stating the obvious, AI is perfectly everyplace lately. There’s AI successful your car, AI successful your messaging app, AI successful your glasses. I’ve gotten beautiful desensitized to it each arsenic a hazard of the job, but it was Spotify’s AI DJ that really sewage my attention. 

I’ve listened to a apical 40 power position successful the past 2 decades, truthful I’m acquainted pinch the conception of a robot picking euphony for me. In that context, an AI DJ doesn’t look for illustration overmuch of a stretch. But aft utilizing it connected and disconnected for a week, I’m convinced it’s the cleanable affinity for our AI-everything moment. It’s eerily human, and it plays a batch of euphony I like. But return it from personification pinch entree to a high-quality section indie power position — 1 that employs quality DJs! — location conscionable ain’t thing for illustration the existent thing.

Spotify’s AI DJ has been astir since early 2023, but it piqued my liking precocious erstwhile I was scrounging astir the app looking for immoderate work-friendly tunes. The AI sound greeted maine by name, past aft a small preamble, told maine it had immoderate “dream popular and neo-psychedelic waves” picked out. As the euphony started, I was irritated astatine really highly my crap it was. I shouldn’t person been surprised, considering that Spotify has astir a decade’s worthy of information connected my philharmonic listening habits. It drew connected my erstwhile listening for the adjacent track, too: a opus by Classixx, whose Hanging Gardens album I listened to connected repetition past year. But while I listened to Hanging Gardens connected Spotify, I didn’t observe it there. I heard it first connected KEXP — a section position wherever existent humans prime the music.

See, present successful Seattle, we’re highly spoiled. In betwixt the robot-programmed, conglomerate-owned stations, we person a existent honest-to-god independent position connected our power dials: 90.3, to beryllium precise. I started listening to KEXP done their online watercourse years earlier I moved to Seattle. Being a section has only made maine much of a fan; I celebrated the opening of the “new” KEXP location successful 2016 and saw 1 of my favourite bands play a free in-studio show location not agelong earlier they collapsed up. I’ve logged countless hours moving connected my laptop successful the organization gathering space. Being capable to locomotion into my favourite power position and conscionable like, bent out, remains cool arsenic hellhole each these years later. I wish each metropolis successful the state had a KEXP.

It’s not that I for illustration everything that I perceive connected KEXP. “The Friday song” is banned successful my location because my hubby and I are some truthful sick of it. And arsenic overmuch arsenic I’ve tried, I can’t get into Wet Leg. It’s a maine problem. But that’s benignant of the constituent of a power station, isn’t it? You perceive immoderate worldly you for illustration and immoderate worldly you’re not arsenic into. Maybe you perceive a opus you forgot astir but emotion aliases a set you excavation that you’ve ne'er heard before. It’s a well-rounded meal, while an AI-curated group feels for illustration a dessert buffet. It’s each the worldly you love, and it’s awesome astatine first, but past it gives you a tummy ache aft a while.

In the era of Spotify algorithms and apical 40 stations, a DJ mightiness look for illustration an absurd concept. But KEXP’s DJs are very overmuch existent group that I spot retired successful the community, emceeing section euphony festivals and shopping astatine the co-op market store. It’s an evident but important difference. When a existent quality plays a opus you really for illustration because they really for illustration it, too, it hits different than erstwhile it comes from an algorithm. 

Being connected aerial and sharing euphony is “a measurement of relationship pinch thousands of group crossed the world,” says Evie Stokes, DJ and big of KEXP’s Drive Time. “It’s a awesome measurement for maine to beryllium honorable and person accountability and organization that I deliberation we truthful desperately need.”

Her relationship to the assemblage is built done and alongside the music; Stokes has shared her travel into sobriety pinch her listeners. “Every clip I talk astir it connected air… I get an influx of messages from folks who are going done akin paths successful their life.” That relationship simply can’t beryllium erstwhile the only point moving the position is simply a robot.

One of the downsides of being employed arsenic a writer is that it’s fundamentally intolerable for maine to perceive to the power while I work. I can’t constitute to songs pinch lyrics, and I decidedly can’t constitute while a DJ is talking. So I move to Spotify a batch during the workday, and I’ve listened to plentifulness of “lofi” and “smooth jazz beats” playlists while blogging. I’ve utilized different of Spotify’s AI features, too: AI-created playlists. For the purpose, they’re fine. Best of all, there’s nary pretense that a quality is picking the euphony for me. I show the machine what temper I’m in, and it assembles a playlist of tunes that fresh the assignment. 

If thing else, the AI DJ is simply a benignant of totem of the peculiar AI infinitesimal we’re in. Generative AI is buzzy, and tech companies are engaged shoving it into each area of each merchandise they make, whether it has immoderate business being location aliases not. There’s plentifulness of worldly AI tin do and astir apt will do for america successful the adjacent future. But opinionated successful for a existent human, particularly successful imaginative applications, isn’t 1 of them. Take it from the Polish power position that tried — and grounded spectacularly — to replace its quality presenters pinch AI characters. 

Does anyone really want an AI DJ calling them by name? Does anybody want an AI-generated DM from their favourite creator? Does anyone want to have a Zoom gathering pinch your AI avatar? Maybe, but I deliberation the tech executives pushing for much of this worldly are vastly overestimating this request and underestimating the worth that a existent quality brings to an exchange. People want to perceive to podcasts, for Christ’s sake. A podcast is conscionable humans talking to each other. Conceptually, listening to a podcast is astir arsenic precocious arsenic gathering information the power for your favourite programme for illustration group did a 100 years ago. Some things are constants.

On the time I started listening to the Spotify AI DJ, I sewage successful the car that day to prime my kid up from daycare. DJ Riz was hosting Drive Time on KEXP, and the first point I heard him play was “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows” by Lesley Gore, released successful 1963. It’s a bop that’s arsenic syrupy-sweet arsenic the candy successful its title. Riz followed that up pinch Love from Mos Def’s 1999 medium Black connected Both Sides. I’m judge I wouldn’t person listened to either of those songs connected my ain that afternoon, fto unsocial backmost to back. But it worked, and the juxtaposition made maine smile. You conscionable don’t get that benignant of point from AI.