Spotify Brings In AI Tech To Create Music Playlists From Text Prompts
In late 2023, Spotify confirmed that AI-generated music playlists are on the way for certain users. It ended a year full of new AI developments for the world’s leading music streamer, which also included song suggester Spotify DJ and even machine-translated podcast content. In 2024, they are expected to bring prompt-generated music playlists to more users.
Spotify & Streaming
Per Q4 reporting, Spotify’s 2023 saw them increase paid subscribers by 15% to solidify their place as the world’s largest music streamer. While profitability is still a concern, the company is a mainstay in the modern music industry. Streamed entertainment has become the primary way people find content online. This isn’t limited to music streamers like Spotify, as the continued success of video-on-demand services like Netflix has shown. Other online sites host live streams that work similarly, best seen with iGaming sites where blackjack online games and other casino activities are available. The popularity of streaming will only improve as more people get access to the internet, and the pre-existing online content gets better and more varied.
Music is arguably the most varied of them all, and Spotify is on a mission to share every niche, genre, and mood with its users. Discoverability is very important to Spotify, plus it keeps users engaged with the platform, hence why their biggest overhauls in 2023 focused on suggesting new music. This started with the Spotify DJ, which uses machine learning to learn your music taste and suggest similar tunes. Then came “daylists” which use the same tech to suggest playlists based on what kind of music you listen to during the day. These efforts seem to have improved Spotify’s subscriber base, though monetization is still an uphill battle.
Prompt Playlist Generation
Among these new features, the latest in the pipeline is AI-generated music playlists. While platforms have used sophisticated AI for years in their suggestion algorithms, this new feature aims to provide suggestions based on text prompts. This means it doesn’t pay attention to your listening activity like the DJ did. Instead, it capitalizes on the popularity of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and OpenAI’s other licensed large language models by using prompts.
Prompts are just words and phrases that, if strung together, can give generative AI all the orders and context it needs to produce results. In this case, typing genres, moods, instruments and other specifics can help it suggest music with each of those qualities.
Starting in mid-December, various users could find the option by clicking the plus sign on your library tab. There, it’ll be below the two standard options to start a playlist or playlist folder. Seconds after sending off the prompt, the AI will create playlists that satisfy as many prompts as possible. Not everyone has access to it yet but, since Spotify have made moves to bring AI tools to their platform, it seems a matter of time before every user gets this nifty tool.
Only time will tell if its combination of AI assistance and cost-cutting measures in 2023 guarantee they stay the #1 streamer of music for the foreseeable future.