This 12 months’s Spotify Wrapped got here with an odd shock. The app’s annual roundup featured extra than simply the same old candy-colored knowledge about which artists, songs, and podcasts customers streamed probably the most. It included a “Wrapped AI podcast” function, utilizing Google’s NotebookLM expertise to verbally recap customers’ listening habits.
This weird addition is extra than simply an audio companion for the knowledge introduced in Wrapped. Two NPR-inflected, artificial-intelligence voices undergo your listening highlights in a conversational (albeit nonetheless robotic) method whereas elaborating in your “moods,” “vibes,” and pursuits all year long. It feels each like listening to a physician undergo your bloodwork outcomes and a psychic vaguely supposing information about your life.
For instance, my “hosts” instructed that I used to be embracing a “bolder” vibe throughout the month of September primarily based on the film soundtracks I used to be consuming. “The Challengers soundtrack and Ludwig Göransson’s work on Oppenheimer makes me marvel in case you had been watching some intense motion pictures throughout this time,” one in every of my “hosts” speculated. This wasn’t completely unfaithful. But I additionally wasn’t certain why I wanted to be informed this details about myself.
The function of this new function isn’t precisely clear. The podcast component feels even much less impressed than a number of the different unusual personalization options the music streamer has launched previously, from an AI DJ who greets customers by their title, to “sound cities” the listener supposedly lives in, to this 12 months’s incoherent labels representing totally different moods (like no matter “Pink Pilates Princess Vogue Pop” is). These options are introduced as makes an attempt to attach with customers on an intimate degree, however they’ve largely confirmed to be nice advertising methods in all their absurdity.
“The purpose of Wrapped, particularly, is model virality,” says Glenn McDonald, former knowledge alchemist at Spotify. “There’s not a lot in the way in which this 12 months of information storytelling.”
Overall, the Spotify listening expertise has by no means felt extra alien.
Spotify’s personalization options are getting bizarre
The app, which launched in 2008, has lengthy been appreciated — and bemoaned — for its user-specific, algorithmically generated playlists and myriad compilations designed for any temper, activity, and time of the day. However, its newer personalization options, with an emphasis on AI expertise, have gotten a bit out of hand. While its expertise is designed to know customers’ tastes, it’s precisely that understanding that retains customers in a repetitive consolation zone of songs, artists, and genres without end.
In 2023, the app rolled out an AI-powered DJ service known as “DJ X,” at the moment out there as “DJ: Wrapped.” Using an assortment of customers’ most performed songs and forgotten favorites, the function imitates the FM radio expertise — solely with out the essential component of discovery and a human information. The AI DJ — who makes use of the replicated voice of Spotify’s Head of Cultural Partnerships, Xavier “X” Jernigan — presents a imprecise preamble in between songs: both primary information in regards to the artists or what temper they assume the subsequent tune will evoke. It feels extra like an try at a guided leisure ritual than an adventurous listening expertise. (Of course, customers even have the choice to skip songs.)
Another AI-powered software Spotify launched earlier this 12 months known as “AI Playlist.” Users can both enter an outline of the kind of playlist they need to hearken to or choose a immediate, and generative AI will whip it proper up. While you may request any type of combine you need, the prompts appears to encourage listening to music the person is already aware of. For instance, the web page at the moment suggests customers strive asking the software to “put [their] prime Wrapped songs so as of launch date” or “give [them] a playlist of the style [they] listened to probably the most.”
Some of those options have gotten much more gimmicky. As a outcome, they’ve develop into efficient advertising instruments. Back in February, the app launched the trippy, cosmic-themed software “Song Psychic,” which mimics a Magic 8 ball. Users choose pre-written questions on their future and are given a (acquainted) tune in return. More broadly recognized is the function “Daylist,” which rapidly unfold throughout social media when it arrived earlier this 12 months. The “hyper-personalized” playlist modifications all through the day to supposedly mirror the person’s temper, primarily based on their listening habits throughout sure occasions of the day. It’s largely garnered consideration for its AI-generated playlist titles that appear like phrase salad (“rage folks pleaser wednesday night,” for instance).
It’s unclear whether or not the “AI podcast” shall be a mainstay of Spotify Wrapped or if Google NotebookLM shall be built-in additional into the app. The “analysis assistant” permits customers to obtain summaries and extra data of paperwork utilizing Google’s Gemini chatbot. However, its operate, so far as the podcast goes, appears a bit redundant for the person. It’s primarily proof of how effectively Google NotebookLM can carry out somewhat than one thing that enhances person expertise in a considerable manner.
Are all these AI instruments simply making us self-absorbed?
These options don’t simply display how effectively Spotify is aware of you, however how predictable your conduct on the app is. These innovations might be enjoyable to mess around with. Sometimes, they’re precisely what customers want for the time being. But to what finish do streaming providers must hold reinforcing and catering to our personal moods and preferences?
McDonald, who now runs the music listing Every Noise At Once, says it’s a traditional inclination for customers to need to hearken to music they already like. “There definitely are retention metrics that say that, unsurprisingly, folks like listening to the issues that they like,” he says. “But except you actually strive precise adventurous experiments on what folks may react to, you actually don’t know.”
During his decade of working at Spotify, McDonald says the streaming service has by no means centered on what “it takes to get folks curious.”
While Spotify has a preferred Discover Weekly playlist that options new songs and artists primarily based round customers’ tastes, there are much less simply discoverable options designed for exploration on the app’s interface. Compare that to playlists the app presents prominently, like Your Time Capsule, On Repeat, and Repeat Rewind, all bringing customers again to their listening consolation zone.
All of those efforts to know listeners ignore music as an interactive artwork kind. These Spotify options counsel that music is completely about your personal pleasure and ease and never one thing that’s meant to be engaged with, sought out, and even criticized. The user-focused promotion of AI doubles down on these habits. Listeners are imagined to be delighted {that a} robotic is aware of each little factor about them, whereas by no means difficult them to increase or change. All in all, these AI-powered options promote a narcissistic and, frankly, boring method to artwork.
“The argument for streaming providers is that each one the world’s music is now accessible to you,” says McDonald. “But if all you do is hearken to what you already know, it’s like giving somebody a teleporter and so they solely use it to teleport again house.”
