On the danger of stating the apparent, AI is completely in every single place currently. There’s AI in your car, 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 bought my consideration.
I’ve listened to a prime 40 radio station previously twenty years, so I’m conversant in the idea of a robotic choosing 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 per week, I’m satisfied it’s the right analogy for our AI-everything second. It’s eerily human, and it performs a whole 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 around since early 2023, nevertheless it piqued my curiosity just lately after I was scrounging across the app in search of some work-friendly tunes. The AI voice greeted me by title, 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 aggravated at how extraordinarily my shit it was. I shouldn’t have been stunned, 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 observe, too: a track 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’ve got an actual honest-to-god impartial station on our radio dials: 90.3, to be exact. I began listening to KEXP by means of 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 every of my favourite bands play a free in-studio show there not lengthy earlier than they broke up. I’ve logged numerous hours engaged on my laptop computer in the neighborhood gathering area. 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 little thing that I hear on KEXP. “The Friday song” 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 Wet Leg. It’s a me drawback. However that’s type 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 track you forgot about however love or a band you dig that you just’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.
It hits completely different than when it comes from an algorithm
Within the period of Spotify algorithms and prime 40 stations, a DJ may seem to be an summary idea. However KEXP’s DJs are very a lot actual those that 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 track you actually like as a result of they actually prefer it, too, it hits completely different than when it comes from an algorithm.
Being on air and sharing music is “a approach of reference to 1000’s of individuals internationally,” says Evie Stokes, DJ and host of KEXP’s Drive Time. “It’s an effective way for me to be sincere and have accountability and group that I feel we so desperately want.”
Her connection to the viewers is constructed by means of and alongside the music; Stokes has shared her journey into sobriety along with her listeners. “Each time I speak about it on air… I get an inflow of messages from of us who’re going by means of comparable 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 principally not possible 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 quite a bit through 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 choosing 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 type 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 doubtless will do for us within the close to future. However standing in for an actual human, particularly in inventive purposes, isn’t one in every of them. Take it from the Polish radio station that attempted — and failed spectacularly — to replace its human presenters with AI characters.
A podcast is simply people speaking to one another
Does anybody really need an AI DJ calling them by title? Does anyone need an AI-generated DM from their favorite creator? Does anybody wish to have a Zoom meeting with your AI avatar? Possibly, however I feel the tech executives pushing for extra of these items are vastly overestimating this demand and underestimating the worth that an actual human brings to an change. Folks want to listen 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 bought 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 by myself that afternoon, not to mention again to again. Nevertheless it labored, and the juxtaposition made me smile. You simply don’t get that type of factor from AI.
