I’m currently going through a bit of a phase with AI features in Spotify, and after recently warming up to its DJ function, I’ve returned to yet another one of its generative AI functions: AI playlist creation.
The music streaming service launched its AI playlist feature in April 2024, allowing you to use ChatGPT-like prompts, which it will use to generate a fresh playlist for you. Like the AI DJ, I used it for a little while at the time of its launch, and that was it. But with a summer of endless gigs ahead of me and a lack of preparation on my part, AI playlists re-entered my music streaming regime – and the experience was a bit of a mixed bag.
A solid return to AI playlists
One of my most anticipated gigs for this year was Lido Festival, a day festival in East London curated by the ultimate party girl Charli xcx. I found this the perfect opportunity to retry AI playlists and create a soundtrack to hype my excitement, and I was pleasantly surprised.
Kicking things off with the prompt, ‘Make a summer playlist featuring Charli xcx, The Dare, and Gesaffelstein’, Spotify generated an adequate playlist that was very heavy with Charli xcx material. To add some range to the playlist, I asked it for fewer Charli xcx songs, which made room for me to ask it to add The Japanese House and Magdalena Bay.
This was a little counterproductive however, as, despite my desire for fewer Charli xcx songs, her presence in the playlist was almost non-existent. I found this quite easy to amend by simply asking, ‘add 4 Charli xcx songs’, and it gave me a little more. From there, I had a solid foundation playlist, which I manually added songs to once I saved it to my library.
It was a helpful way to kick-start a playlist. However, its understanding of prompts has a few setbacks.
A disappointing second attempt
Once I had familiarized myself with it, I went back to it to create a mood-focused playlist, beginning with the prompt, ‘A gritty, melancholic playlist with Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and similar artists’. What it produced was fine, but it could’ve been a bit better on the artist suggestion front, as it added artists like Olivia Rodrigo, whose sound is different from the prompted artists.
However, I was glad that it gathered a mix of modern and classic songs, the majority of which fit the melancholic vibe that I was looking for. But it only gave me one Lana Del Rey song, and when it came to fine-tuning the playlist, this is where it got a little frustrating.
Asking the AI to ‘add more ‘90s grunge’ eradicated most of the modern tracks it started off with, and therefore still lacked Lana Del Rey. After asking the AI three times to add a few more of her songs, it failed to pull through, so I discarded the playlist. But I still wasn’t done.
Third time’s a charm
Instead of referring to particular artists, I went back into crafting a playlist based on genre and vibe, asking it to make a ‘heavy workout playlist featuring modern rap and RnB’. I already have a personal workout playlist, but wanted to see how an AI playlist would compare.
It gave me what I was expecting, with a couple of Kendrick Lamar songs topping the playlist – which is what I was hoping for – along with artists not far off the ones in my current workout playlist. Overall, I was pleased.
Fine-tuning the playlist with the prompt ‘add late 2010s upbeat RnB’ gave the playlist a bit more diversity artist-wise, and although it listened to me, it diluted the heavy rap and RnB sounds it started with. This is when I asked it to add specific artists from the late 2010s to see if the playlist would catch on – and it did.
Asking the playlist to add Brockhampton sparked a wave of songs of a similar genre from the same era, and we were so back.
Spotify’s AI playlist function isn’t as bad as I remember it being. However, it still has a few setbacks that need to be fixed. The main one being its ability to balance older and modern songs, instead of completely overriding a playlist with songs from a specific decade when you ask it to add ‘a few’.
Is Spotify’s AI playlist perfect for creating an entire playlist? Perhaps not, but that doesn’t mean it can’t produce a good kick-starter playlist for you to manually tailor to fit the sound you’re looking for.
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