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

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

I’ve listened to a prime 40 radio station prior to now 20 years, so I’m conversant in the idea of a robotic selecting music for me. In that context, an AI DJ doesn’t appear to be a lot of a stretch. However after utilizing it on and off for every week, I’m satisfied it’s the proper analogy for our AI-everything second. It’s eerily human, and it performs a variety 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, however 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 title, then after a bit of preamble, informed 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 price of knowledge on my musical listening habits. It drew on my earlier listening for the subsequent 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 — an area 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 now have an actual honest-to-god unbiased station on our radio dials: 90.3, to be exact. I began listening to KEXP by their on-line stream years earlier than I moved to Seattle. Being an area has solely made me extra of a fan; I celebrated the opening of the “new” KEXP location in 2016 and noticed one in all 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 locally gathering house. With the ability to stroll into my favourite radio station and similar 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 every part 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 form 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 appears like a dessert buffet. It’s all of the stuff you like, and it’s nice at first, however then it offers you a abdomen ache after some time.

Within the period of Spotify algorithms and prime 40 stations, a DJ would possibly appear to be an summary idea. However KEXP’s DJs are very a lot actual those that I see out locally, emceeing native music festivals and purchasing 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 means of reference to 1000’s of individuals the world over,” says Evie Stokes, DJ and host of KEXP’s Drive Time. “It’s an effective way for me to be trustworthy and have accountability and neighborhood that I believe we so desperately want.”

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

One of many downsides of being employed as a author is that it’s principally unattainable for me to hearken to the radio whereas I work. I can’t write to songs with lyrics, and I undoubtedly can’t write whereas a DJ is speaking. So I flip to Spotify rather a lot 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 wonderful. 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 task. 

If nothing else, the AI DJ is a form of totem of the actual AI second we’re in. Generative AI is buzzy, and tech firms 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 possibly will do for us within the close to future. However standing in for an actual human, particularly in artistic functions, isn’t one in all them. Take it from the Polish radio station that attempted — and failed spectacularly — to exchange its human presenters with AI characters. 

Does anybody truly need an AI DJ calling them by title? Does anyone need an AI-generated DM from their favourite creator? Does anybody wish to have a Zoom assembly along 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 obtained within the automobile that afternoon to choose 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 certain I wouldn’t have listened to both of these songs alone that afternoon, not to mention again to again. However it labored, and the juxtaposition made me smile. You simply don’t get that form of factor from AI.