I recently wrote an article charting my time with Spotify’s new playlist-compiling AI helper, in which I explained that I wasn’t necessarily convinced that I or anyone else would want to delegate my curation duties to a semi-sentient algorithm that could, when it wasn’t pulling together “pop tracks to play in the background as you deliver bad news to a work colleague”, one day destroy the world. Even so, I wasn’t down on the idea of the popular platform branching out into areas beyond pure music streaming.
The idea of Spotify widening its net to become a Swiss-army-knife outlet from which you can access audiobooks, download your music and access higher (if not outstanding) levels of music quality isn’t something that irks me in and of itself. This is mainly because I’m a frequent user who makes regular two-hour trips to our Reading office around the gruelling turmoil that is the M25, so it’s nice to have distractions other than my selection of grunge rocks classics and the incessant voices in my own head to keep me sane during my weekly commute. A full recording of I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan read by the author, plus every episode of the broadcasting legend’s Knowing Me Knowing You? at the tips of my ears? Back of the net!
