Spotify was released in December of this year Annual “Wrapped” feature For users. Each user’s listening habits were collected, personalized, and condensed into an easily shareable compilation, highlighting top artists, most played songs, and total watch time in a year-long review. Spotify has not only offered this feature to users for a decade, but also marketed it to artists and labels as a way to track global trends in genres and listening habits.
However, for 2024, Spotify used: Google NotebookLM provide free personalized podcasts Based on the user’s “wrap” results. Although AI was already integrated in certain markets, Spotify’s AI DJthis personalized podcast was a new feature. Spotify Wrapped goes a step further and goes beyond social media images and TikTok-enabled videos by adding two voices that talk about you (you) for several minutes.
This personalized podcast leverages current listening trends. According to Edison Research’s 2024 Infinite Dial ReportApproximately 100 million people in the US alone listen to podcasts on a regular basis. Almost 50% of people over the age of 12 have listened to at least one podcast in the last month. Podcast shows and hosts cover everything. real crime, child rearing, current events, ink ringeven An hour-long study of Supreme Court precedent.. During the last U.S. presidential election, candidates from both major political parties made guest appearances on various podcasts, and each episode was watched by millions of listeners.
Instead of the intimacy that comes from friendship where you share and discuss interests, you’re just left alone listening to your smartphone.
Perhaps the appeal of podcasts lies in their specificity. The topic at hand is determined by each listener’s own choice. Want to hear your favorite celebrities’ opinions on current events? Need tips for navigating the modern dating scene? There’s a podcast for that. However, with Spotify Wrapped podcasts, the topic selection is especially unique and personal. Now, the main topic is a review. you: your music hobby, your listening habits and your Genre preference.
The audio discusses your favorite genre, it could be something specific like “Viking Vocal A Cappella,” and what you were doing that day with the most accumulated listening time. Guess. (For my own podcast, the extended viewing on May 15th meant I went on a trip when my kids actually had a stomach flu and needed a distraction.) ) These male and female voices discuss the peculiarities of music. Because it determines your music taste based on rankings, you may be led to believe that your favorite artists are based on these rankings. must We know you are one of their top fans.
But the popularity of podcasts extends beyond topic selection to style. When podcast hosts converse with each other or interview guests, they tend to create a casual, intimate format that makes listeners feel included in the conversation.. Spotify’s AI-generated audio does sound real and conversational. They interrupt each other, ask questions, have emotional ups and downs, and perhaps most importantly, argue. you. A comment on my own podcast read, “Your musical journey this year has been amazing!” “It really shows how you understood their music.”
Through the act of hearing themselves discussed and praised, users feel understood and part of an intimate group. My friends know me well, but right? (Fahrenheit 451 degreesThe depiction of a languid Mildred talking to the parlor wall suddenly becomes more sympathetic. )
Spotify-wrapped podcasts certainly show advances in AI. But more importantly, their popularity highlights the prevalence of loneliness. American adults are becoming less socially connected and increasingly isolated, which means fewer friendships. The US Army Surgeon General pointed out that dangerous meaning Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt also discusses this lack of connection in his best-selling book. anxious generation.
At first listen, AI-created podcasts look a lot like how CS Lewis imagined early human debates in the movies. four loves. He describes the friendship found in the recollection of events: After death” This was done with the purpose of “drawing conclusions for future use.” Lewis writes: “Two or more companions discover that they share insights, interests, and even hobbies that they do not share with others, and that until that moment each believed they were uniquely theirs.” Sometimes friendship is born out of mere camaraderie.” A treasure (or a burden). ”
Spotify’s AI-generated podcasts seek to achieve this feeling through an interest in. youYour taste in music is so unique that you share it among your “friends”. But instead of the intimacy that comes from friendship where you share and discuss interests, you’re just left alone listening to your smartphone.
Listening to this fake conversation about personal preferences and unseen moments, you might feel like you’re staring into Elise’s mirror. in harry potter and the philosopher’s stone, Dumbledore warns Harry that the mirror “reveals the deepest and most desperate desires” of those who look into it. [their] You lose your mind and are unable to make decisions or even move. Instead, they only admire what they see in the mirror. Their lives pass by as they long for the impossible.
We long to be known and understood, to feel the warmth of a friend. Instead, on Spotify, the AI-generated audio is interrupted like a tree to repeat what we already know: our own voices.
Source: Christ and Pop Culture – christandpopculture.com
