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Although I risk stating the obvious, artificial intelligence is absolutely everywhere these days. AI is in your car, AI is in your messaging app, AI is in your glasses. I had become quite desensitized to all this due to the risks associated with the job, but Spotify’s AI DJ caught my attention.
I’ve listened to the top 40 radio stations over the last twenty years, so I’m familiar with the concept of a robot selecting music. In this context, the work of an AI DJ does not seem too complicated. But after using it on and off for a week, I’m convinced it’s a perfect analogy for our AI moment. He’s incredibly human and plays a lot of music that I like. But tell that to someone who has access to a high-quality local independent radio station – one that employs human DJs! – there’s just nothing like the real thing.
Spotify AI DJ has been around since early 2023, but it piqued my interest recently when I was browsing the app looking for songs to work on. The AI voice greeted me by name and then, after a low introduction, told me that he had chosen “dream pop and neo-psychedelic waves.” When the music started playing, I was annoyed by how much of my shit it was. I shouldn’t be surprised, considering Spotify has almost a decade of data on my music listening habits. This was also based on my previous listening to the next song: the song Classixx whose Hanging gardens An album I listened to many times last year. But when I listened Hanging gardens on Spotify, I didn’t discover it there. AND I heard it for the first time on KEXP — a local station where real people choose the music.
You see, here in Seattle, we are extremely spoiled. Between the robotically programmed stations belonging to the conglomerate, we have a truly independent station on our radios: 90.3, to be precise. I started listening to KEXP through their online streams years before I moved to Seattle. Being a local only made me a bigger fan; In 2016, I celebrated the opening of the “new” KEXP location and saw one of my favorite bands play a free studio performance there shortly before their breakup. I spent countless hours working on my laptop in the community meeting space. Being able to go to my favorite radio station and just hang out remains pretty damn frigid all these years later. I would like every city in the country to have KEXP.
It’s not like I like everything I hear on KEXP. ““Friday Song” is banned in my house because my husband and I are both fed up with it. And even though I’ve tried, I can’t get to it Wet leg. That’s my problem. But that’s the point of a radio station, right? You hear things you like and things you don’t like. Maybe you hear a song you’ve forgotten about but love, or a band you like that you’ve never heard before. It’s a complete meal, and the set developed by artificial intelligence resembles a dessert buffet. It’s everything you love and it’s great at first, but after a while it gives you a stomachache.
It hits differently than when it comes from an algorithm
In the age of Spotify algorithms and top 40 stations, DJing may seem like an abstract concept. However, KEXP DJs are real people that I see in the community, hosting local music festivals and shopping at the co-op grocery store. This is an obvious but key difference. When a real human plays a song you really like because They I really like it too, it hits differently than when it comes from an algorithm.
Being on air and sharing your music is “a way to connect with thousands of people around the world,” says Evie Stokes, DJ and host of KEXP Driving time. “It’s a great way for me to have integrity, accountability and a sense of community that I think we so desperately need.”
Her bond with the audience is built through and alongside music; Stokes shared her journey to sobriety with her listeners. “Every time I talk about it on air… I get tons of messages from people who are going through similar paths in their lives.” This connection simply cannot exist when the only thing operating the station is a robot.
One of the disadvantages of being a writer is that I basically can’t listen to the radio while I work. I can’t write lyrics to songs, and I definitely can’t write while the DJ is talking. So I employ Spotify a lot during the day, and I listen to a lot of “lofi” and “glossy jazz beats” playlists while blogging. I also used another Spotify AI feature: AI-created playlists. They are fine for this purpose. And most importantly, I don’t pretend that music is chosen for me by a human being. I tell the computer what mood I’m in and it puts together a list of songs that match the task.
If nothing else, AI DJ is a sort of totem of the specific AI moment we’re in. Generational AI is buzzing, and tech companies are busy pushing it into every corner of every product they make, whether it makes any sense or not. Artificial intelligence can and likely will do many things for us in the near future. But replacing a real human being, especially in creative applications, is not one of them. Let’s take this as a statement from the Polish radio, which tried – without spectacular success – to do this replace your human presenters with AI characters.
A podcast is just people talking to each other
Does anyone really want an AI DJ to call them by their name? Does anyone want a DM from their favorite AI-generated creator? Does anyone want to have a Zoom meeting with your AI avatar? Maybe, but I think tech executives pushing for more of this stuff are vastly overestimating this demand and underestimating the value that a real human brings to the exchange. People you want to listen to podcastsfor God’s sake. A podcast is just people talking to each other. Conceptually, listening to a podcast is as advanced as gathering around the radio to listen to your favorite show, just as they did a hundred years ago. Some things are permanent.
The day I started listening to the Spotify AI DJ, I got in the car that afternoon to pick up my child from kindergarten. The host was DJ Riz Driving time at KEXP and the first thing I heard him play was Lesley Gore’s “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows”, released in 1963. It’s a bop as sweet as syrup, as the candy in its title. Riz continued this Love from Mos Def’s 1999 album Black on both sides. I’m sure I wouldn’t have listened to any of these songs on my own that afternoon, let alone one after the other. But it worked, and this combination made me smile. You just don’t get things like that from AI.
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