Amazon Music has joined Spotify in experimenting with AI tools to allow users to create playlists. Called Maestro, the chatbot is being made available in beta to a small number of US-based users on all tiers of Amazon Music.
“To get started, all you need is a prompt idea - you can go for something short (or long), use emojis, emotions, activities, sounds, or choose from one of the suggested prompts”, explains the company.
Emojis? Yes, it goes on, “Feel like listening to songs that sound like 🤖? Maestro’s got you. Within seconds, you’ll be able to admire your use of emojis to evoke the perfect songs, and get a unique-to-you playlist that brings a selection of electronic and robot-like tracks to life. All that’s left to do is listen to what you created, save it, share it with friends to listen, and they can create their own to share back”.
Spotify launched its own AI playlist creation tool - also in beta - in the UK and Australia earlier this month. That too allowed you to nudge the bot into action using emojis, among other things. It remains to be seen if this is anything more than a novelty, and it’s perhaps telling that both companies are tentatively putting this feature out to a limited number of users, rather than implementing it with any big fanfare.
Other prompts Amazon suggests, by the way, include “😭 and eating 🍝”, “Music my grandparents made out to”, and “Myspace era hip hop”. Anyone? No? OK. How about 🤳👾🤦♂️💩?
