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Casey Newton
Casey Newton
@Casey@theforkiverse.com  ·  activity timestamp 4 days ago

Something for all our Forkiverse vibe coders: I wrote about Spotify's new tool to let you vibe-code *playlists*, which has solved the biggest problem I have with streaming music https://www.platformer.news/spotify-prompted-playlists-ai-meta-vibes/

For years now, we’ve worried — justly — about the flattening effect that AI has on taste. Instead of encouraging us to pursue our own individual interests, it can feel as if AI only ever drags you back to the median. (My Hard Fork co-host Kevin Roose calls this “machine drift.”) If you have autoplay enabled on Spotify, you’ve likely experienced a version of this: the way that the algorithm will take a song that you mostly like and slowly ruin it for you over the course of weeks of relentless autoplaying.

Prompted playlists, on the other hand, hand you back that lost agency. It’s an AI tool that helps you explore your own taste, rather than a system to replace it.
For years now, we’ve worried — justly — about the flattening effect that AI has on taste. Instead of encouraging us to pursue our own individual interests, it can feel as if AI only ever drags you back to the median. (My Hard Fork co-host Kevin Roose calls this “machine drift.”) If you have autoplay enabled on Spotify, you’ve likely experienced a version of this: the way that the algorithm will take a song that you mostly like and slowly ruin it for you over the course of weeks of relentless autoplaying. Prompted playlists, on the other hand, hand you back that lost agency. It’s an AI tool that helps you explore your own taste, rather than a system to replace it.
For years now, we’ve worried — justly — about the flattening effect that AI has on taste. Instead of encouraging us to pursue our own individual interests, it can feel as if AI only ever drags you back to the median. (My Hard Fork co-host Kevin Roose calls this “machine drift.”) If you have autoplay enabled on Spotify, you’ve likely experienced a version of this: the way that the algorithm will take a song that you mostly like and slowly ruin it for you over the course of weeks of relentless autoplaying. Prompted playlists, on the other hand, hand you back that lost agency. It’s an AI tool that helps you explore your own taste, rather than a system to replace it.
Platformer

How a new AI tool fixed my single biggest problem with Spotify

Spotify’s Molly Holder on the power of prompted playlists. PLUS: Meta is testing a standalone Vibes app
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PostStalker
PostStalker
@poststalker@theforkiverse.com replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

@Casey I can't recall if you and Kevin ever made mention of Liz Pelly's book from last year, but it's worth a gander. As is Ted Gioia's interview on Rick Beato's channel, in which Ted (arguably the most qualified living jazz historian) mentions jazz listening playlists recommended by Spotify where even he doesn't recognise a single artist -- because it's simply 'fske' music.

If there were a way to filter this dross, I think such a script would be invaluable!

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Casey Newton
Casey Newton
@Casey@theforkiverse.com replied  ·  activity timestamp yesterday

@poststalker yeah we interviewed the author

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PostStalker
PostStalker
@poststalker@theforkiverse.com replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

@Casey While this is an imaginative and useful way to address the issue, I can't help but note it is probably not even in my top 10 'biggest problems' with Spotify -- preeminent amongst which is what I'm unwisely calling the 'Second Great Replacement Theory'. That's where genuine artists are shoved aside in favour of in-house 'ghost musicians' and AI-generated pablum, all to avoid paying royalties.

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Casey Newton
Casey Newton
@Casey@theforkiverse.com replied  ·  activity timestamp yesterday

@poststalker yeah you can use this to avoid ghost musicians

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Crackhappy
Crackhappy
@crackhappy@cyberpunk.lol replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

@Casey Oh man, you're still on Spotify? Keep up.

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StudioChien
StudioChien
@studiochien@theforkiverse.com replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 days ago

@Casey
Amazing ! I’ve been using LLms to build playlists since GPT3.5 and have been wondering if others with more experience in the matter are able to tell which model has the best taste/ culture/ creativity for this ?
#music #ai #playlist

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hiforkimdad
hiforkimdad
@hiforkimdad@theforkiverse.com replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 days ago

@Casey if you want the meta AI (not Meta (tm)) version of this, you can connect ChatGPT to your Spotify account, have a full conversation about your music taste and listening history with it, and then have ChatGPT prompt the Spotify AI to build a playlist

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Alsy
Alsy
@Alsy@theforkiverse.com replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 days ago

@Casey Semi-related side question. Is there a way to organise your liked songs into new playlists by category? My liked songs list is so sprawling and varied that it’s sort of unlistenable because the jumps from classical to hip hop to 90s shoegaze (or whatever) are too jarring.

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Nate Diggity Dawg
Nate Diggity Dawg
@NateDiggityDawg@theforkiverse.com replied  ·  activity timestamp 4 days ago

@Casey as a community radio DJ, I both fear and desire this. On one hand, we are the last bastion of humans curating music for our communities. On the other hand, we all only know so much music....

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