At the risk of stating the obvious, AI is absolutely everywhere lately. Thereâs AI in your car, AI in your messaging app, AI in your glasses. Iâve gotten pretty desensitized to it all as a hazard of the job, but it was Spotifyâs AI DJ that actually got my attention.Â
Technology
Spotify’s AI is no match for a real DJ
Spotify’s AI DJ sounds eerily human and knows what kind of music you like, but there’s just nothing like the real thing.
Iâve listened to a top 40 radio station in the past two decades, so Iâm familiar with the concept of a robot picking music for me. In that context, an AI DJ doesnât seem like much of a stretch. But after using it on and off for a week, Iâm convinced itâs the perfect analogy for our AI-everything moment. Itâs eerily human, and it plays a lot of music I like. But take it from someone with access to a high-quality local indie radio station â one that employs human DJs! â there just ainât nothing like the real thing.
Spotifyâs AI DJ has been around since early 2023, but it piqued my interest recently when I was scrounging around the app looking for some work-friendly tunes. The AI voice greeted me by name, then after a little preamble, told me it had some âdream pop and neo-psychedelic wavesâ picked out. As the music started, I was annoyed at how extremely my shit it was. I shouldnât have been surprised, considering that Spotify has nearly a decadeâs worth of data on my musical listening habits. It drew on my previous listening for the next track, too: a song by Classixx, whose Hanging Gardens album I listened to on repeat last year. But while I listened to Hanging Gardens on Spotify, I didnât discover it there. I heard it first on KEXP â a local station where real humans pick the music.
See, here in Seattle, weâre extremely spoiled. In between the robot-programmed, conglomerate-owned stations, we have a real honest-to-god independent station on our radio dials: 90.3, to be precise. I started listening to KEXP through their online stream years before I moved to Seattle. Being a local has only made me more of a fan; I celebrated the opening of the ânewâ KEXP location in 2016 and saw one of my favorite bands play a free in-studio show there not long before they broke up. Iâve logged countless hours working on my laptop in the community gathering space. Being able to walk into my favorite radio station and just like, hang out, remains cool as hell all these years later. I wish every city in the country had a KEXP.
Itâs not that I like everything that I hear on KEXP. âThe Friday songâ is banned in my house because my husband and I are both so sick of it. And as much as Iâve tried, I canât get into Wet Leg. Itâs a me problem. But thatâs kind of the point of a radio station, isnât it? You hear some stuff you like and some stuff youâre not as into. Maybe you hear a song you forgot about but love or a band you dig that youâve never heard before. Itâs a well-rounded meal, while an AI-curated set feels like a dessert buffet. Itâs all the stuff you love, and itâs great at first, but then it gives you a stomach ache after a while.
It hits different than when it comes from an algorithm
In the era of Spotify algorithms and top 40 stations, a DJ might seem like an abstract concept. But KEXPâs DJs are very much real people that I see out in the community, emceeing local music festivals and shopping at the co-op grocery store. Itâs an obvious but crucial difference. When a real human plays a song you really like because they really like it, too, it hits different than when it comes from an algorithm.Â
Being on air and sharing music is âa way of connection with thousands of people across the world,â says Evie Stokes, DJ and host of KEXPâs Drive Time. âItâs a great way for me to be honest and have accountability and community that I think we so desperately need.â
Her connection to the audience is built through and alongside the music; Stokes has shared her journey into sobriety with her listeners. âEvery time I talk about it on air⦠I get an influx of messages from folks who are going through similar paths in their life.â That connection simply canât exist when the only thing running the station is a robot.
One of the downsides of being employed as a writer is that itâs basically impossible for me to listen to the radio while I work. I canât write to songs with lyrics, and I definitely canât write while a DJ is talking. So I turn to Spotify a lot during the workday, and Iâve listened to plenty of âlofiâ and âsmooth jazz beatsâ playlists while blogging. Iâve used another of Spotifyâs AI features, too: AI-created playlists. For the purpose, theyâre fine. Best of all, thereâs no pretense that a human is picking the music for me. I tell the computer what mood Iâm in, and it assembles a playlist of tunes that fit the assignment.Â
If nothing else, the AI DJ is a kind of totem of the particular AI moment weâre in. Generative AI is buzzy, and tech companies are busy shoving it into every corner of every product they make, whether it has any business being there or not. Thereâs plenty of stuff AI can do and probably will do for us in the near future. But standing in for a real human, especially in creative applications, isnât one of them. Take it from the Polish radio station that tried â and failed spectacularly â to replace its human presenters with AI characters.Â
A podcast is just humans talking to each other
Does anyone actually want an AI DJ calling them by name? Does anybody want an AI-generated DM from their favorite creator? Does anyone want to have a Zoom meeting with your AI avatar? Maybe, but I think the tech executives pushing for more of this stuff are vastly overestimating this demand and underestimating the value that a real human brings to an exchange. People want to listen to podcasts, for Christâs sake. A podcast is just humans talking to each other. Conceptually, listening to a podcast is about as advanced as gathering round the radio for your favorite program like people did a hundred years ago. Some things are constants.
On the day I started listening to the Spotify AI DJ, I got in the car that afternoon to pick my kid up from daycare. DJ Riz was hosting Drive Time on KEXP, and the first thing I heard him play was âSunshine, Lollipops and Rainbowsâ by Lesley Gore, released in 1963. Itâs a bop thatâs as syrupy-sweet as the candy in its title. Riz followed that up with Love from Mos Defâs 1999 album Black on Both Sides. Iâm sure I wouldnât have listened to either of those songs on my own that afternoon, let alone back to back. But it worked, and the juxtaposition made me smile. You just donât get that kind of thing from AI.