Spotify has begun testing a new AI Playlist feature, which will see a super smart computer brain help that mostly useless grey blob inside your skull curate collections of music for you.
As of now, Spotify Premium subscribers in the UK and Australia can play with the new feature, which is currently in beta. It allows anyone who wishes to do so to build a playlist by typing an idea into a chat box. So you might start with something like, “Yo Spotibot, I’d like a playlist of really nice songs”.
It’s possible your imagination can think of a prompt even more creative than that. And actually, Spotify says it works best if you feed the AI prompts featuring genres, moods, artists or decades. So maybe something like, “Howdy SpotifAI, I’d really like to hear a playlist of 90s pop tracks to make me feel like I’m being whipped up like candyfloss. Also include Slayer”.
In fact, you can also include places, animals, activities, movie characters, colours and emojis to enrich your playlist ideas. So maybe something like, “Hi there Spotifriend, please could I hear a load of really red blues songs from the 1970s that will make me feel like I’m on a doleful trip to Paris with Marty McFly to play tennis with a squirrel 🤢. Also include Slayer”.
It doesn’t have to be exactly that. But along those lines. And if you’re not happy with what music the AI comes up with, you can carry on the chat and refine the playlist until you’ve got exactly what you want. So things like, “make it sound redder”, “imagine the squirrel is better at tennis than you’d expect”, or - of course - “more Slayer”.
Announcing the feature, Spotify said in a statement, “Over the coming months, we look forward to continuing to iterate on this new feature to best serve our listeners”. Which reads like something an AI wrote. Good work!
