European music streaming service Deezer has employed artificial intelligence to help users curate playlists. The new AI Playlist feature creates song lists based on text prompts that describe anything from musical genres and eras to current emotions and activities.
Playlist with AI is currently in beta, with 5% of Deezer subscribers randomly selected to try out the feature, but the idea of an AI tool that creates playlists from text is catching on fast, so the company is likely keen to offer it to more customers. Spotify’s AI DJ, Amazon Music’s new Maestro and YouTube Music’s AI-generated Radio are all either released or in their own testing stages. Like its rivals, Playlist with AI uses AI models to interpret text prompts provided by users and curate suitable songs from Deezer’s music library, even if the user hasn’t played them before.
“We’re excited to bring this AI-powered feature to Deezer users around the world,” Alexandra Leloup, Deezer’s vice president of product, said in a statement. “Whether you need the perfect soundtrack for a workout, a romantic evening or a trip down memory lane, our AI-powered playlist feature will curate a new music experience within seconds, giving you endless possibilities to discover new music with ease.”
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Deezer has been working with AI for a while now: users can already create AI-generated playlists with the Flow feature, but these are limited to specific moods, genres, and songs that they’ve previously added to their favourites lists. There’s also an AI-powered song identifier, SongCatcher.
AI-powered playlist creators will only intensify competition among platforms offering playlists. As personalized playlists become more prevalent, streaming services may begin to treat them as a required standard feature. There are also broader implications for the music industry: AI recommendations could help boost exposure for emerging artists. By including lesser-known tracks that fit user-specified criteria, AI can introduce audiences to new talent that might never have been discovered otherwise.
Unless, of course, music labels are paying to boost the weight of their clients’ music in the algorithm so that it plays more frequently with more text prompts, but that’s a kind of postmodern Payola (the scandal in which radio stations secretly received money from record labels to play certain songs), which could undermine playlist personalization and anger music fans if not done in an open and clearly marked way.