Comment by keiferski
9 days ago
AI DJs for music feel a bit like AIs writing restaurant reviews. Possible in theory, but fundamentally I don’t really care what a machine thinks, I care about what a human, preferably an expert human, thinks.
I listen to a lot of DJ mixes on YouTube (Hör Berlin is great, for example) and part of the appeal is what this particular DJ picks: what kind of music are they listening to in the country they’re from, how are they interpreting it, what are they mixing it with, etc. For some DJs there’s also kind of a personal visual brand, like musicians themselves.
The idea of an anonymous AI picking an optimized list of music kind of defeats the purpose.
Curation is the future, and those with the depth and breadth of knowledge required to do it well will be in high demand. The human touch will become a selling point and attract those in the know.
While there has always been room for middle-of-the-road "content", there have also always been those that seek a higher value. I expect that segment to only grow.
I like using the automatic lists in soundcloud to discover new music. Often its hit or miss but it can surface some great tracks... Its intentional though, gotta have your finger on the skip track and heart...
Right but a good DJ introduces you to new music while fitting the track into the set as a whole. It’s not a random music discovery process, and oftentimes I’ll end up mostly preferring to listen to a song as a part of the set, not individually.
To use the food analogy again: sure, if you just eat random things on the menu, you might find new foods that you enjoy. But it’ll be a much better experience if the chef / restaurant is introducing you to new foods in an intelligent way, not randomly or “We see you like chicken, so try this other chicken dish.”
no idea how spotify ai specifically works (i don't use that service) but:
> fitting the track into the set as a whole. It’s not a random music discovery process
there have been plenty of attempts to analyze music and to automate track matching like the music genome (going back to '99) and while human DJ's definitely have their place (i actually listen to lots of those) it's not inconceivable that a lot of modern music could also be mixed and matched automatically with at least half-decent (to a human) results.
P.S. found the article itself pretty funny - like a nerdy, methodical complaint, just funny to read
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Using recommendation engines feels like wading through the sewers. Eventually you find some gems but you have to pass a lot of shit on the way. Listening to actual DJ sets is gem after gem. Only problem is if you are looking for stuff to dj with yourself, most of what they are playing is yet unreleased or private edits that never come out.
But how do you find a good dj and then fight Spotify to listen to their set list?
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I much prefer the human curated 'casts or mix shows from DJs with early releases from labels that do a mix while telling you the track/artist/release date. These are clearly aimed at human DJs rather than the larger public. But as far as new recommendations, they are far superior to "automatic" lists from any platform.
I can't really tell the difference between the mixes Spotify has been generating for more than a decade, except that the DJ picks which mix and then an LLM writes some DJ patter to wrap around it. I've gotten a lot of value over the years out of Spotify picking what song comes next when my queue is empty, I've been introduced (or re-introduced) to a lot of good music this way but there is no magic to it, its just a ML recommendation/engagement model like many others.
i like going through chatgpt to generate spotify mixes. much more personalized.
Sure, it’s not the same as a human suggesting music. But sometimes people consume art for the art, not for the curator! Both are worthwhile.
Sure, and a simple random number generator will use significantly fewer resources for the same desired result.
Surely you’d agree on second thought that Spotify’s recommendation algorithms are more reliable than pure chance?
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There's a big difference between a real human DJ, especially one at a live event that can read the audience, versus what is essentially Spotify shuffle with some LLM voice in-between songs. It knows the song coming up next so it can spout off some random words it's pulled from various review sites. It's not really that impressive once you've used it, the Spotify shuffle and the generated song blurbs are the real tech running the show.