It has been a busy week of music announcements for Spotify, with one more yesterday – but also a building story that is less positive for the company, and a leak about one of its potential future features focusing on musicians.
We’ll start with the news. First, Spotify’s AI-powered DJ is getting smarter (in a linguistic sense) and also more responsive to listeners.
The Spanish-language version of DJ now accepts voice requests in Spanish, while both the English and Spanish-language versions can now accept requests via text prompts.
This follows Spotify’s recent announcement of an external integration with ChatGPT, whose parent company OpenAI is also its technical partner for DJ. The more ways listeners are able to make requests and talk back to DJ, the closer the feature gets to becoming a fully-fledged music AI agent.
Now for the less positive story. Criticism of Spotify’s decision to allow the US government to place recruitment ads for its controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency on the service is getting louder.
Newsweek reported on growing chatter on social media from users who’ve deleted Spotify’s app in protest after hearing the ads.
The hubbub has got to the point where Spotify responded with an official statement. “This advertisement is part of a broad campaign the US government is running across television, streaming, and online channels,” said its spokesperson.
“The content does not violate our advertising policies. However, users can mark any ad with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to help manage their ads preferences.”
Spotify will be watching carefully to see whether any ICE-spurred boycott spreads to artists, particularly Latin American and LatinX artists who a.) are one of the most important communities for Spotify and b.) may have strong views on ICE given the furoré around its immigration raids this year.
Finally, the leak – although it’s a relatively minor one that is unlikely to spark chaos within Spotify. Jane Manchun Wong, who has made a name for herself digging through app code to uncover secret features, published screenshots showing a new ‘SongDNA’ beta feature that shows the different musicians and composers involved in tracks.
The usual ‘tests don’t always become official features’ caveat applies, but if SongDNA does progress from beta, it would be part of a longer-term drive by Spotify to present more-detailed credits for tracks.
That also includes its plans to adopt a new industry standard that will reveal the role AI plays in any given track. SongDNA appears to be giving the humans involved some additional prominence too.
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