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Around 10pm on weekdays, I was on the sofa playing with my smartphone as usual. After opening up Spotify and picking up some Death Scroll background music for bedtime, the app was something new to me. A popup with a green circle on a blue background, New AI DJWell Spotify, I don’t care. I had heard a little bit about this feature, but I was still unprepared for what was coming next. Spotify contacted me.
“It’s really great to be here with you. I’m Xavier, but my friends call me X. And from this moment on, I’ll be your very own AI DJ on Spotify.” Yeah I’m an AI but listen I don’t set timers or turn on lights I’m all about the music your music I know what you’re listening to You can see the Rijadu Sisters there,” says the app, Recent Favorites my.
“So I’m going to be here every day and play the artists you pick in rotation,” he says, going back to the history of the songs you loved. I just push my limits a little bit.”
I’m all for testing my boundaries with this new digital friend. Spotify pushed them.of my friend Kevin Haller An article analyzing Spotify’s AI DJ announcement, I had the same reaction as him. It seemed like a strange, hype-based decision. Always on Spotify (basic) AI I’m picking songs for you. It has an algorithm that analyzes your listening habits and makes recommendations. Rebranding this as “AI DJ” seemed like a gimmick at best. But at the time, I didn’t read Kevin’s article closely (sorry Kev) and didn’t understand what it was really trying to say.
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Since the robot gave me the breakdown, The sides of the circle moved with the words, mimicking a human mouth.
“I come back every few songs to change the atmosphere. But if you’re not feeling the music, there’s a DJ button at the bottom of the screen. Tap on it to switch back early,” he said. “Okay, enough talk. I mentioned the Lijadu Sisters. And let’s start with some other music you’ve been listening to.”
Spotify seems to want you to think it’s a man now. Specifically, an interesting person of color and arguably a carefully considered corporate strategy. Good, at least in a way.modern DJ culture, like much of America’s heritage, stems directly from the black community.
But it’s not just people of color. Xavier “X” Jernigan A real person and head of Spotify’s charismatic cultural partnerships. And the AI that Spotify simply calls “DJ” uses his voice. The company said it trained a voice model based on his rhythm, intonation and slang. A Spotify writer has created a script for DJs, apparently allowing the app to say whatever it wants.
As I listened, the DJ popped in every 3 or 4 songs to introduce the next set. The recommendations are surprisingly good, cycling through genres and styles I’ve listened to, playing tracks I’ve never heard of, and picking a few obscure favorites with perfectly pronounced AI names. .
Robots cannot experience the weather
At first, it felt surprisingly human and real. But as the track progressed, things got weird.
“Next, I’ve prepared some of my favorite summer jams,” it said. Fair enough, but the DJ sprinkling of commentary struck an odd chord. “There’s something about that hot summer night,” says DJ and the normally stellar voice glitches like a robot in the final few words.hang on. be? Jernigan is a real person, AI DJ is not. I am convinced that no computer program can experience summer. By the way, did this AI exist until last summer? The more I listened, the more I understood. A echo came from across the uncanny valley.
“It’s a little wild because it’s so big and it looks like it’s blowing up, but I’m honored and humbled to be the voice of it.” real jernigan recently told a newscaster on a local TV station in Los Angeles. Sadly, Spotify and Jernigan did not return interview requests. (I swear to be a good person!)
“Wild” doesn’t quite capture it. DJ is still in beta, so you never know what’s coming next. But it’s rolling out to his 205 million premium subscribers on Spotify. DJ introduces himself as Journigan and often uses the words “me” and “us”, but it also seems to identify as something of its own, or perhaps another person of its own. As we listen, we find that the Spotify app has an unspoken identity, his crisis.
Gizmodo’s article on Spotify’s introduction to DJs said it “mimics the worst parts of listening to the radio,” and that’s a good thing. A headline I can’t decide whether to agree or disagree with. Radio, once the world’s brightest medium, is in a dismal state in 2023.Almost every major radio station in the United States has a tracklist of pre-selected by corporate supervisors, And the “DJ” usually doesn’t have a say in the music. What is surprising to me is 83% of Americans People over the age of 12 listened to terrestrial radio every week, and that number was even higher before the pandemic.
But DJs who talk about songs when you turn on the radio usually don’t have much personality. Often he even reads the script. But you can get a personal touch with an indie or college station.This is something I really miss in New York where I don’t have a car and I don’t listen to music on the radio. my radio show On a platform called Blast Radio, music is exclusively chosen and sometimes a free service run by users, who can do whatever they want while their microphone is on.
Spotify’s DJ is the oddball in between. It sounds like you’re getting recommendations from a tasteful music expert (specifically, it’s actually your taste). However, this commentary is scripted and read by a computer. Spotify has human curators for some playlists, but most DJ’s Picks are selected “by hand” by an algorithm. I don’t mind hearing friendly voices talking about the music they’re listening to, but DJs usually don’t say much about songs and artists. Talking Heads.that largely It feels like something you’ve missed from your days stuck in California traffic, but it’s not. At least not.
Spotify’s AI DJ plays echoes from the other side of the uncanny valley
The whole is part of a much broader phenomenon. There is a mild anti-business sentiment flowing through the US, perhaps traceable to the disillusionment that prevailed after the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent bailouts.for huge consumers Companies have spent the last few years adopting a new kind of PR strategy. They want you to think of them as individuals with distinct personalities.
It’s a hot trend twitter, Steak-umms and Wendy’s are parading around like they’re just guys you can talk to online. Sometimes an account takes on the persona of a company’s social media manager, but more often than not, it’s just Domino acting like he’s someone with ideas and aspirations.
This trend is especially noticeable in the technology industry. Companies strive to do more than just present themselves as people they know. But as an actual embodied entity. Apple and Amazon named their voice assistants after human females.Using the new ChatGPT Bing is very clear “personality” Before Microsoft Intervenes lobotomized it after it got all racist and weird. You’re not just talking to a digital assistant. a lot of tThese tools are scripted to make you feel like you’re talking to the company itself.
In that sense, Spotify isn’t doing anything new here, but it’s gone We are further ahead than our tech competitors. No other technology company has given digital voice an actual human persona. Most companies can speak clearly in common language. “White” voice, unless you change the settings. However, one key difference is that you can’t talk to Spotify’s DJs, you can only listen to them. Spotify had its own voice assistant, Retire in 2022.
An even bigger change is underway at Spotify. The company doesn’t want to be the only music streaming service that is a real competitor in the tech industry.He has more than 12 famous music streaming apps Companies with identical pricing, nearly indistinguishable music libraries, and copycat features.
That’s changing, at least as far as Spotify’s interface is concerned.The company recently adopted the TikTok style A visual feed that lets you scroll through visual content for songs and artists in the music tab. DJ is part of this project, which appears to be a broader effort to categorize what it means to be “on Spotify” in some sort of anthropological sense. We want to be a media company.
The web is moving out of the sameness stage of exploiting top-down creativity. Rather than embracing the unique and interesting nature of their services, tech companies have focused on monetization strategies, copying the capabilities of their competitors and hijacking the best of their own platforms. It was compatible. The booming Big Tech wave of growth we once enjoyed is no longer possible. But it feels like that’s starting to change. In my early days online, most of the internet was reserved for young people and passionate weirdos. That’s pretty much how I feel these days. Being with a Spotify DJ reminded me of my recent travels. Wedding at Taco Bell in Metaverse (seriously). For the first time in years, the internet has become delightfully weird.
The DJ and I would go back and forth for hours and then come back over the next few days. “Next is a track that you loved, but it’s been a minute since he heard it,” said the DJ. memory I don’t think I’ve heard it since I had a girl play it in 2014. Remembering that moment makes me feel good, a recommendation that can only be made by collecting my data. Then the DJ said “what i learned todayby Hüsker Dü, a really great punk band that I haven’t listened to enough.
I haven’t sorted out how I feel about DJ yet, but I don’t hate him.But next time the DJ chimes in that smooth bassHe said that he was listening to “share dee” in the voice of y. This is a rather strange mispronunciation of Hüsker Dü, even taking into account the umlaut. DJ’s can be a little glamorous, but in the end robots always break the magic.
The early 2000s were far from the freedom of the web when it came to enterprise experimentation, too, but things are a little tighter than they used to be. At least on the Internet, “What the hell is going on?”
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