← Back to context

Comment by alberto467

8 days ago

Who would even DJ on classical music?

If you have the slightest knowledge of classical music you would know it should not be mixed like in a dj set, and you would not optimize your dj algorithm for it.

I think you could pick out a movement from this and then a movement from that. I can see somebody wanting to have classical music playing all day without having to pick out specific tracks, like listening to the radio.

  • I think the auto DJ feature is already well capable of that: having tracks playing the all day.

    But if you want to preserve the original composition of classical music, you have to play the track start to finish, preferably with a small pause between tracks as well.

    • I have to admit that my rock and pop music listening is still album-oriented whether it is The Kinks or The Super Furry Animals or Charlie XCX.

I think it is totally reasonable to want something that plays all movements from one work, then finds similar works to play after that.

Sure, that might not be what a DJ algorithm is optimized for, but a more generalized AI like an llm should be able to figure that out.

  • You are very right, using a generalized LLM in combination with good music search and metadata tools works very well for this sort of thing. I know because I built a platform that does this. The big limiter isn't the tech, it's what the rights-holders will allow. They maintain tight control over their catalogs because renting that intellectual property is their entire business model. This makes them very cautious about letting any actually useful AI near their music and metadata.

> you would know it should not be mixed like in a dj set, and you would not optimize your dj algorithm for it.

Yet the computer program happily tried to do it anyway. It would be much better to fail with a clear error message than to try to proceed and emit garbage.

Yeah, if he wants to listen to your complete albums, it’s unclear to me why he would be using a DJ feature or expected the DJ to do that. Just play the albums manually or set up playlist. It’s like having a six CD changer and putting it on shuffle and then complaining that it shuffles.

And then we have artists such as Gas who famously mixed classical with dub techno.

It is not uncommon to have parts of a classical music movement in a DJ set, even if it lasts only a few seconds.

Until 2009, WGBH FM… then they shuffled it. Which went about as well as this tool.