Spotify’s adoption of AI for playlist curation exemplifies a mutually beneficial approach
Amidst the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) by industry, Spotify, a music streaming service, announced its plan of adding AI for creating playlists. On Monday Spotify introduced AI playlists into beta, a new option which will enable users to generate a playlist based on written prompts. Initially, the feature will be available to users on Android and iOS devices in the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia.
Spotify explained that prompts can refer to all sorts of things, such as places, animals, activities, movie characters, colours and emojis, among others. It also added that the best playlists will be generated using prompts that contain a combination of genres, moods, artists and decades, among others. “Spotify’s adoption of AI for playlist curation exemplifies a mutually beneficial approach, enhancing user experience while enabling the organisation to tailor solutions and responses effectively,” Devroop Dhar, co-founder and managing director, Primus Partners, said.
Industry experts believe that the collaboration of music and AI-driven prompts marks a transformative leap in how technology understands and interacts with human preferences. “The collaboration underscores a future where AI not only comprehends user’s requests but can anticipate their needs, crafting personalised experiences with accuracy. It’s a testament to how far AI has progressed in learning from and adapting to human behaviour, setting the stage for a more intuitive, responsive digital world,” Vijay Navaluri, co-founder and CCO, Supervity, explained.
Spotify’s new AI playlist tool is expected to stand as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it enables users with options to find music that suits their own preferences and moods, which boosts user satisfaction and engagement on the platform. However, it has its own cons too. “Depending too much on AI to create playlists can lessen the human touch and curation knowledge that distinguishes well-curated playlists. Additionally, if users prefer prompts over the desire to explore music, the feature may become oversaturated and dilute the music discovery experience,” Om Singh, founder, Adyah Music, highlighted.
What’s next!
From what it is understood, the key innovation here is not the fact that Spotify will offer AI enabled playlists, but that it has been built atop third party and disaggregated LLM offerings. The new initiative is expected to bring shift in AI tech, which will evolve from a pure-play, deep dive endeavour to an off-the shelf offering that companies can pay for and build using. “AI modules are essentially now becoming object blocks, and this is a shift that can usher significantly accelerated innovation. – This is similar to what we saw with the advent of AWS and the ability to large scale deployments without having to invest in the capex of building your own data + compute infrastructure. AI will see a similar evolution from capex to opex, and Spotify’s move is another indication of the move in that direction,” Utkarsh Sinha, managing director, Bexley advisors, concluded.