This year’s Spotify wrap brought a strange surprise. The app’s annual roundup features more than the usual candy-colored data on which artists, songs and podcasts users streamed the most. It includes a “Wrapped AI Podcast” The feature uses Google’s NotebookLM technology to verbally retrieve users’ listening habits.
This whimsical addition is more than just an audio companion to the information presented in Wrapped. Two NPR-introduced, artificial-intelligence voices present your listening highlights in a conversational (though still robotic) manner, detailing your “moods,” “vibes” and interests throughout the year. Listening to the doctor feels like both your blood work results and a mental vaguely assumed information about your life.
For example, my “host” suggested that I adopt a “brave” vibe in September based on the movie soundtracks I’m using. “Give Challengers Soundtrack and work by Ludwig Göransson Oppenheimer Makes me wonder if you’re watching some intense movies at the moment,” surmised one of my “hosts”. This was not entirely untrue. But I wasn’t sure why I needed to share this information about myself.
The purpose of this new feature is not exactly clear. The podcast element feels less inspired than other quirky personalization features the music streamer has launched in the past, from an AI DJ who greets users by name. “Sound City” The audience lives supposedly, this year’s incoherent labels that represent different moods (like whatever “Pink Pilates Princess Vogue Pop”). These features are presented as attempts to connect with users on an intimate level, but they are largely proven Great marketing strategy In all their absurdity.
“Rapid, in particular, aims for brand virality,” says Glenn Macdonald, a former data alchemist at Spotify. “There’s not a lot of data storytelling this year.”
Overall, the Spotify listening experience has never felt more alien.
Spotify’s personalization features are getting weird
The app, which launched in 2008, has long been praised — and mourned — for its user-specific, algorithmically generated playlists and countless compilations designed for any mood, task and time of day. However, its emphasis on AI technology has gone out of hand with its new personalization features. While its technology is designed to understand users’ tastes, it’s precisely that understanding that keeps users in the repetitive comfort zone of songs, artists and genres.
In 2023, the app launched an AI-powered DJ service called “DJ X,” Currently available as “DJ: The Wrap”. Using a collection of users’ most-played songs and forgotten favorites, the feature mimics the FM radio experience — just without the critical element of discovery and a human guide. The AI DJ — who uses the transcribed voice of Spotify’s head of cultural partnerships, Xavier “X” Jernigan — makes a vague suggestion between songs: either basic information about the artists or what mood they think the next song will set. It feels more like an attempt at a guided relaxation ritual than an adventurous listening experience. (Of course, users also have the option to skip songs.)
Another AI-powered tool Spotify launched earlier this year is called “AI Playlist.” Users can either enter a description of the type of playlist they want to listen to or select a prompt and Generative AI will fix it. Although you can request any type of mix, the prompts seem to encourage listening to music the user is already familiar with. For example, the page currently suggests asking users to “put” the tool [their] Top wrapped songs in order of release date” or “given [them] A playlist of genres [they] heard most.”
Some of these features have been more subtle. As a result, they became Effective marketing tools. In February, the app introduced trippy, cosmic-themed tools “Song Psychic,” which simulates a magic 8 ball. Users select pre-written questions about their future and are given a (familiar) song in return. A more widely known feature “Day List,” It quickly spread across social media after it came out earlier this year. “Highly personalized” playlists change throughout the day to reflect the user’s mood based on their listening habits at certain times of the day. It basically got attention for him AI-generated playlist titles which look like word salads (“for example, “Anger makes people happy on Wednesday evenings”).
It’s unclear if “AI Podcasts” will be a mainstay of Spotify Wrapped or will be further integrated into the Google NotebookLM app. “Research Assistant” allows users to get document summaries and additional information using Google’s Gemini chatbot. However, its functionality, as far as podcasts go, seems somewhat redundant to the user. This mainly proves how well Google NotebookLM can perform rather than something that improves the user experience in a substantial way.
Are all these AI tools just making us self-absorbed?
These features not only demonstrate how well Spotify knows you, but how predictable your behavior in the app is. These inventions can be fun to play with. Sometimes, they are exactly what users need at the moment. But what purpose do streaming services have to power and cater to our own moods and preferences?
McDonald, who now runs the Music Directory Every noise at onceThat said, it’s a natural trend for users to listen to music they already like. “There are certainly retention metrics that say, surprisingly, people like to listen to things they like,” he says. “But unless you do really adventurous experiments on what people might react to, you don’t really know.”
During his decade at Spotify, McDonald says the streaming service never focused on “what it takes to get people curious.”
While Spotify has a popular Discover Weekly playlist that features new songs and artists based on users’ preferences, the app’s interface has less easily discoverable features designed for exploration. Contrast that with the playlists the app offers specifically, like Your Time Capsule, On Repeat and Repeat Rewind, which bring users back to their listening comfort zone.
All these attempts to know the audience ignore music as an interactive art form. These Spotify features suggest that music is purely for your own enjoyment and comfort and not something to be engaged with, explored and even criticized. User-centric promotion of AI doubles down on these practices. Audiences should be delighted that a robot knows every little thing about them, while never challenging them to expand or change. Above all, these AI-driven features promote a narcissistic and frankly, dull approach to the industry.
“The rationale for streaming services is that all the music in the world is now accessible to you,” says McDonald. “But if all you do is listen to what you already know, it’s like giving someone a teleporter and they just use it to teleport home.”
