Streaming - A role for AI?

Recent article from Forbes about Spotify and its “AI-powered music tool” which can allow users to “create personalized versions of their favorite songs.” This feature is also suspected as the reason for delay of Spotify’s new premium tier which includes CD-quality 16-bit lossless (24-bit may also be in the cards supposedly). Some snippets from the article below:

Imagine having the tools to change tempos, reimagine songs in different genres or with different instruments or replace vocals with entirely different ones at your fingertips.

It’s about offering ways for listeners to become active rather than passive consumers of music. Although much of this is speculation at the moment, I think we can expect to see Spotify and other streaming services take this direction as they build new user experiences.

…Perhaps the other insight we can take is that AI features are increasingly being used to differentiate between standard and premium subscription tiers.

Unsure if I’d want to be that interactive with my music on a Sunday morning, but curious nonetheless. I’ve tried Spotify’s AI-generated playlist feature and have had moderate success, but like ChatGPT, results are dependent on the detail of your request.

I have been thinking about having AI involved in my music selection. I average over 30 hours a week on ROON (plus FM radio) and that is a lot of decision on my part as to what to listen to. I was wondering if ROON would integrate with the current AL models.

The following two articles about Spotify are pretty interesting which can be found here and here. Part of the equation that another member had brought up in this forum a year or two ago (as well as the first article) is the user base. The greater amount of users = the greater amount of data that Ai can pull which generates recommendations. I believe there’s likely a variable of personal usage duration that help steer these recommendations even more - quality of recommendations may vary from a user who streams an hour/day vs a user who streams three hours/day. 

Ai and its implementation doesn’t appear standardized, but lets say it was across all of the streaming platforms and we were strictly looking at user base and available data:

Spotify - 236 million users (2023) here

Apple Music - 93 million users (2023)

Tidal - 2.1 million (does not disclose/lawsuit claimed)

Qobuz - 200,000 users (2019, somewhat murky info) 

Spotify and its massive user base would appear to have an upper hand on data and perhaps its recommendations to its users. 

If you’re a Roon user:

Roon's general explanation of Valence can be found here. 

Interesting discussions on Roon Radio within Roon Forums can be found here and Valence here. 

* feel free to correct the numbers above. Used Ai to locate the majority of the stats :)