ChatGPT and Music: Could Artificial Intelligence be a Spotify Killer?  

ChatGPT is the talk of the town, and it is poised to change how we work. But it is also set to take on the music industry. How? Here’s an example. Do you have really specific music taste? Hard to find music that totally catches you? Now you can use artificial intelligence (AI) assistants like ChatGPT to make suggestions that might match your taste.

We tried it and hot damn, it did really well.

Spotify problems vs GPT-4

While streaming sites like Spotify can give users recommendations for new music, users don’t really know how many of these suggestions have a commercial element. That is, if record companies have paid Spotify for exposure.

Cherie Hu, a music and tech journalist tweeted about a change in the Spotify app recently. In the “About recommendations” section, it now says, “In some cases, commercial considerations may influence our recommendations.”

While Spotify is a commercial platform and its job is to make money, it may mean that the music recommendations it suggests to you in its Discovery mode might not be as aligned to us as we think it is.

Algorithmic recommendation is a huge part of the success of Spotify. Users streamed their personalised algorithmic playlists for a combined 2.3 billion hours between 2015 and 2020.

Are you are suspicious that a lot of your recommendations are sponsored content? So how can we get genuine tune recommendations, based on what we know we like? We can ask AI.

ChatGPT music recommendations

We used the following ChatGPT prompt to find music better suited to us: “I want you to act as a song recommender. I’ll provide you with a song and you will create a playlist of 10 songs that are similar to the given song. You should also provide a name for the playlist.”

The song of choice was Oblivion by Grimes.

Here’s what ChatGPT came up with.

Playlist Name: Ethereal Synthpop

1. Grimes – Genesis
2. FKA twigs – Two Weeks
3. Keane – Crystal Ball
4. Jon Hopkins – Breathe This Air
5. TR/ST – Destroyer
6. Beach House – Elegy to the Void
7. Daughter – Youth
8. Aurora – Runaway
9. Explosions in the Sky – Your Hand In Mine
10. CHVRCHES – The Mother We Share

Build your playlist

Once you have your recommendations, you can build your playlist. And you don’t even need to do this on Spotify. If you listen to YouTube through an ad blocker app, you don’t get any ads. So you can build you playlist FOR FREE and never hear a commercial. At all.

This playlist was a damn smashing success. Every song is loved. LOVED.

So what if you have a very mixed range of taste in music? We gave ChatGPT a mix of our faves and asked it to come up with 100 songs that align with this taste.

Our list:

• Grimes – Oblivion
• Grimes – Genesis
• Woodkid – Run Boy Run
• Darude – Sandstorm
• Bring Me The Horizon – Throne
• HAIM – Now I’m in it
• Calvin Harris – Feel So Close
• Iggy Azalea – Fancy ft Charli XCX
• SKRILLEX – Banagarang feat Sirah
• M.I.A. – Paper Planes
• Spiderbait – Calypso
• Eric Prydz – Valerie
• Stairsailor – Four to the Floor (Thin White Duke Mix)
• JVKE – Golden Hour
• The Kid LAROI, Justin Bieber – Stay
• Rema, Selena Gomez – Calm Down

ChatGPT came back with this

Playlist Name: Eclectic Indie Electronic

1. CHVRCHES – The Mother We Share
2. Purity Ring – Obedear
3. Glass Animals – Gooey
4. Phantogram – Fall In Love
5. Tame Impala – Let It Happen
6. Arcade Fire – Reflektor
7. LCD Soundsystem – Someone Great
8. Crystal Castles – Not In Love ft. Robert Smith
9. Empire of the Sun – Walking on a Dream
10. MGMT – Electric Feel
11. The Postal Service – Such Great Heights
12. Passion Pit – Little Secrets
13. Cut Copy – Lights and Music
14. RÜFÜS DU SOL – Innerbloom
15. Sylvan Esso – Coffee
16. The Naked and Famous – Young Blood
17. Caribou – Can’t Do Without You
18. Robyn – Dancing on My Own
19. The XX – Intro
20. Disclosure – Latch ft. Sam Smith
21. Daft Punk – Get Lucky ft. Pharrell Williams
22. Major Lazer – Lean On ft. MØ, DJ Snake
23. The 1975 – Love It If We Made It
24. Flume – Never Be Like You ft. Kai
25. Vampire Weekend – A-Punk
26. Phoenix – 1901
27. Alt-J – Breezeblocks
28. Jungle – Busy Earnin’
29. SBTRKT – Wildfire ft. Little Dragon
30. Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks
31. Arctic Monkeys – Do I Wanna Know?
32. Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out
33. Radiohead – Karma Police
34. The Strokes – Last Nite
35. Kings of Leon – Sex on Fire
36. Imagine Dragons – Radioactive
37. The Neighbourhood – Sweater Weather
38. Lana Del Rey – Summertime Sadness
39. Lorde – Royals
40. Billie Eilish – bad guy
41. Doja Cat – Say So
42. Ariana Grande – 7 Rings
43. Dua Lipa – Don’t Start Now
44. The Weeknd – Blinding Lights
45. Lizzo – Juice
46. Anderson .Paak – Come Down
47. Kaytranada – Lite Spots
48. Thundercat – Them Changes
49. Flying Lotus – Never Catch Me ft. Kendrick Lamar
50. Childish Gambino – Redbone

Yet again, ChatGPT has impressed the pants off us. Yes indeed, it night be time to cancel the Spotify subscription.