Spotify Introduces an A.I. Playlist Generator, Deepening Personalization Push
"It takes this metaphor we've always had with Spotify of, what if you had your own personalized DJ?...this metaphor is now a reality," said Ziad Sultan, Spotify's head of personalization.
Spotify's personalization team, and Ziad Sultan, vice president of personalization," width="970" height="647" data-caption='Head of personalization Ziad Sultan (right) and members of the Spotify personalization and AI DJ team. <span class="lazyload media-credit">Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</span>'>
Audio streaming platform Spotify today (April 8) launched the beta version of a new personalization feature called “AI Playlist,” which allows users to create playlists with text prompts that describe what type of music they’d like to listen or the mood they’re in.
Users can make a playlist using descriptors from colors to fictional characters to emojis. The tool is currently available for Spotify Premium users, who pay $10.99 or more a month in the U.S. However, the feature will first be available in the U.K. and Australia for iOS and Android users. More users should expect to see A.I. playlists on their Spotify apps “over the coming months,” according to a press release.
Spotify has been gradually introducing A.I. tools for streamers since last year with the launch of the “AI DJ” in February 2023. The feature was made possible through the company’s collaboration with OpenAI, giving it new technology to build out the platform’s discovery capabilities. The two companies also collaborated on Spotify’s A.I. voice translation for podcasts, where users can listen to any podcast in their own language while the podcaster’s voice stays the same.
In an interview with Bloomberg in August 2023, Ziad Sultan, Spotify’s head of personalization, said that the AI DJ product “recommends better and learns better” than anything the company has used before. Sultan, a former Google product manager working on the Google News team, joined Spotify in 2019 to lead the development of penalization products. He was promoted to vice president of personalization in 2022.
“It takes this metaphor we’ve always had with Spotify of, what if you had your own personalized DJ? What would they do for discovery?” Sultan told Bloomberg. “They would create Discover Weekly, they would curate your homepage, your daily mix, but this metaphor is now a reality.”
Spotify confirmed to TechCrunch in December that it was testing a prompt-based playlist generator after two of its engineers posted screenshots that looked related to the feature, coupled with a viral video on TikTok showing a user getting the AI Playlist on their phone last November.