Spotify’s AI isn’t any match for an actual DJ

On the threat of stating the apparent, AI is completely in every single place currently. There’s AI in your automotive, AI in your messaging app, AI in your glasses. I’ve gotten fairly desensitized to all of it as a hazard of the job, nevertheless it was Spotify’s AI DJ that truly acquired my consideration. 

I’ve listened to a high 40 radio station prior to now 20 years, so I’m aware of the idea of a robotic selecting music for me. In that context, an AI DJ doesn’t seem to be a lot of a stretch. However after utilizing it on and off for every week, I’m satisfied it’s the right analogy for our AI-everything second. It’s eerily human, and it performs quite a lot of music I like. However take it from somebody with entry to a high-quality native indie radio station — one which employs human DJs! — there simply ain’t nothing like the actual factor.

Spotify’s AI DJ has been round since early 2023, nevertheless it piqued my curiosity just lately once I was scrounging across the app in search of some work-friendly tunes. The AI voice greeted me by identify, then after somewhat preamble, advised me it had some “dream pop and neo-psychedelic waves” picked out. Because the music began, I used to be irritated at how extraordinarily my shit it was. I shouldn’t have been shocked, contemplating that Spotify has practically a decade’s value of knowledge on my musical listening habits. It drew on my earlier listening for the following monitor, too: a music by Classixx, whose Hanging Gardens album I listened to on repeat final 12 months. However whereas I listened to Hanging Gardens on Spotify, I didn’t uncover it there. I heard it first on KEXP — a neighborhood station the place actual people decide the music.

See, right here in Seattle, we’re extraordinarily spoiled. In between the robot-programmed, conglomerate-owned stations, we’ve an actual honest-to-god unbiased station on our radio dials: 90.3, to be exact. I began listening to KEXP via their on-line stream years earlier than I moved to Seattle. Being a neighborhood has solely made me extra of a fan; I celebrated the opening of the “new” KEXP location in 2016 and noticed considered one of my favourite bands play a free in-studio present there not lengthy earlier than they broke up. I’ve logged numerous hours engaged on my laptop computer in the neighborhood gathering area. Having the ability to stroll into my favourite radio station and identical to, hang around, stays cool as hell all these years later. I want each metropolis within the nation had a KEXP.

It’s not that I like the whole lot that I hear on KEXP. “The Friday music” is banned in my home as a result of my husband and I are each so sick of it. And as a lot as I’ve tried, I can’t get into Moist Leg. It’s a me downside. However that’s sort of the purpose of a radio station, isn’t it? You hear some stuff you want and a few stuff you’re not as into. Possibly you hear a music you forgot about however love or a band you dig that you simply’ve by no means heard earlier than. It’s a well-rounded meal, whereas an AI-curated set looks like a dessert buffet. It’s all of the stuff you’re keen on, and it’s nice at first, however then it offers you a abdomen ache after some time.

Within the period of Spotify algorithms and high 40 stations, a DJ would possibly seem to be an summary idea. However KEXP’s DJs are very a lot actual those who I see out in the neighborhood, emceeing native music festivals and procuring on the co-op grocery retailer. It’s an apparent however essential distinction. When an actual human performs a music you actually like as a result of they actually prefer it, too, it hits totally different than when it comes from an algorithm. 

Being on air and sharing music is “a manner of reference to hundreds of individuals the world over,” says Evie Stokes, DJ and host of KEXP’s Drive Time. “It’s a good way for me to be trustworthy and have accountability and group that I believe we so desperately want.”

Her connection to the viewers is constructed via and alongside the music; Stokes has shared her journey into sobriety together with her listeners. “Each time I discuss it on air… I get an inflow of messages from people who’re going via related paths of their life.” That connection merely can’t exist when the one factor operating the station is a robotic.

One of many downsides of being employed as a author is that it’s mainly not possible for me to hearken to the radio whereas I work. I can’t write to songs with lyrics, and I positively can’t write whereas a DJ is speaking. So I flip to Spotify quite a bit throughout the workday, and I’ve listened to loads of “lofi” and “easy jazz beats” playlists whereas running a blog. I’ve used one other of Spotify’s AI options, too: AI-created playlists. For the aim, they’re high quality. Better of all, there’s no pretense {that a} human is selecting the music for me. I inform the pc what temper I’m in, and it assembles a playlist of tunes that match the project. 

If nothing else, the AI DJ is a sort of totem of the actual AI second we’re in. Generative AI is buzzy, and tech corporations are busy shoving it into each nook of each product they make, whether or not it has any enterprise being there or not. There’s loads of stuff AI can do and doubtless will do for us within the close to future. However standing in for an actual human, particularly in inventive functions, isn’t considered one of them. Take it from the Polish radio station that attempted — and failed spectacularly — to change its human presenters with AI characters. 

Does anybody truly need an AI DJ calling them by identify? Does anyone need an AI-generated DM from their favourite creator? Does anybody wish to have a Zoom assembly together with your AI avatar? Possibly, however I believe the tech executives pushing for extra of these things are vastly overestimating this demand and underestimating the worth that an actual human brings to an alternate. Individuals wish to hearken to podcasts, for Christ’s sake. A podcast is simply people speaking to one another. Conceptually, listening to a podcast is about as superior as gathering around the radio in your favourite program like folks did 100 years in the past. Some issues are constants.

On the day I began listening to the Spotify AI DJ, I acquired within the automotive that afternoon to select my child up from daycare. DJ Riz was internet hosting Drive Time on KEXP, and the very first thing I heard him play was “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows” by Lesley Gore, launched in 1963. It’s a bop that’s as syrupy-sweet because the sweet in its title. Riz adopted that up with Love from Mos Def’s 1999 album Black on Each Sides. I’m positive I wouldn’t have listened to both of these songs alone that afternoon, not to mention again to again. But it surely labored, and the juxtaposition made me smile. You simply don’t get that sort of factor from AI.