Spotify DJ Has Changed The Way I Find And Listen To Music

Ryan Haines / Android Authority

Spotify has been experimenting with AI in some form since 2023, when it first debuted its personalized DJ. In the early days, I felt the DJ was pretty rough. Sure, it would sometimes provide me with new bangers in the style I liked or play some old yet beloved song I hadn’t thought about in decades, but the biggest issue was the lack of real customization. This improved significantly in 2024 with the introduction of AI playlists, but it’s been a slow journey.

Since then, I’ve been regularly using Spotify’s AI features. I often put on the DJ when cleaning or working out, and I’ve used the AI playlist system to create customized playlists of newer music tailored to my tastes and more. Although not everyone has been impressed by Spotify’s AI, I’ve found that carefully constructed prompts result in pretty decent playlists.

While I’ve been experimenting with these features since day one, I never relied on them consistently for music recommendations, mostly treating them as curiosities. However, this has changed in 2025 with Spotify’s latest AI improvements. Even though I used the DJ regularly before, it was definitely the weaker element due to its inability to interact or adapt to immediate requests. Thankfully, this changed earlier this month when the DJ gained the ability to take specific requests.

Between the AI playlists and the new DJ improvements, I genuinely feel that Spotify’s AI features have changed the way I find and listen to music for the better.

What I love about Spotify DJ and AI Playlists

Andrew Grush / Android Authority

Some people are extremely particular about their music preferences. They memorize playlist orders and have specific songs they jump to by memory — my daughter is one of them. There’s nothing wrong with this approach; some people know exactly what they want to listen to and precisely when.

I’m very different. My musical tastes can shift from country to heavy metal, screamo to pop, and then to alternative music all within fifteen minutes. Consequently, I enjoy variety and love discovering new songs.

In the distant past, most of my new music recommendations came from the radio. This still occasionally happens, but nowadays, I’m more likely to choose Spotify. Simply put, it’s an excellent tool for discovering new music and rediscovering forgotten favorites for me.

It did a decent job of capturing my style, but I disliked its inflexibility. For instance, despite primarily listening to instrumental playlists during work, the DJ would randomly play these tracks while I was cleaning or exercising, completely killing the mood.

AI Playlists addressed this issue somewhat in 2024, allowing me to build playlists based on detailed prompts, resulting in a long list of tailored recommendations. The key lesson I learned: specificity matters. For example, saying, “Don’t play 80s music,” might yield 80s tracks due to inconsistent interpretation. Conversely, saying, “Only play music from the 60s, 90s, and from 2000 onward,” yielded significantly better results.

My teenage daughter is disgusted that I listen to many of the same modern songs as she does. Thanks, Spotify!

By this point, I found myself using the Spotify radio function less, though it still served as a quick way to discover new music. And now, with the latest 2025 DJ update allowing direct requests, I might stop using the radio function altogether. The ability to interrupt the DJ has been a game-changer, too. For example, if I’m suddenly in the mood for reggae or smooth jazz, I can now request it instantly. No need to settle for whatever the DJ is currently suggesting, and yet it’s still faster than swapping playlists in most cases.

Earlier today, I requested songs similar to “Sharks” by Imagine Dragons. While most suggestions weren’t new, the DJ played several favorites and even introduced tracks missing from my existing playlists, like “Feel It Still” by Portugal. The Man. It also redundantly included “Sharks,” but I didn’t mind.

Combined with AI playlists, I’ve discovered more new music than ever before in the last few months or so. Previously, I added new songs sporadically, with most of my playlist anchored around tracks from the 80s through the early 2010s. Now, I have playlists featuring dozens of songs written after 2020, an expansion that would have happened more slowly and sparsely using my earlier methods.

Spotify has changed my listening habits in a major way, but they’re still not perfect by any definition.

There’s still plenty of room for improvement

Andrew Grush / Android Authority

As much as I find the DJ useful, especially now that I can interact with it, the experience still leaves much to be desired. For one thing, interaction is still fairly limited, as you have to manually hit the Request button in the DJ. This might not seem like a big deal, but it means every time I want to change up my music, I have to take my phone out of my pocket. Although I can still hit the Next button to change the DJ’s track, there’s no way to interact with it beyond this.

I would absolutely love to have some kind of voice trigger system in the app, or perhaps integration with Gemini so I can use Google’s assistant to make requests to the DJ as well. Considering Spotify’s solution uses several AI technologies, including OpenAI for generative AI aspects, it doesn’t seem out of left field that Spotify would eventually work with Google to ensure Android OS-level controls can interact with all of its core features, including these AI functions.

The DJ shows a lot of promise, but the interactivity is still a bit limited.

Beyond voice triggers, I’d like more granular customization. Currently, the DJ uses my music playback history and its own internal algorithms, which can be helpful, but often lack context. For example, it recently suggested songs I had obsessively listened to a month ago. There’s a reason I stopped playing them — I had worn them out! Customized prompts or personality features could help inform the DJ why certain tracks are temporarily out of rotation and better hone your mood in the moment.

Similarly, AI Playlists could use improvements. Current AI prompts must be highly specific, and sometimes the AI hallucinates, suggesting irrelevant songs or too few options. Simple clarification prompts — “I couldn’t find exact matches, please clarify” — would significantly enhance the user experience.

Spotify is on the right track, but competition is on its heels

Robert Triggs / Android Authority

While it’s not perfect, I truly believe Spotify is on the right track with its AI features. It may have some competition in the form of features like YouTube Music’s Ask Music AI radio feature, but it’s still the clear leader in this space for now. In fact, it’s really the only major music streaming platform that has invested heavily in AI integration outside of a few small test features.

In its current stage, the AI features can yield truly amazing results or absolute garbage — it’s a bit of a coin flip, like most things involving AI. For those who tried it and hated it, it’s also important to note that it currently requires a lot of interaction before it gets better. I’ve noticed the more I skip tracks or entire selections, the more refined it becomes with its picks. This isn’t quite the full customization I’d like to eventually see, but it’s important to note that what you get with Spotify DJ on day one isn’t necessarily what you’ll get after a week or two of regularly using it.

If Spotify can improve its AI customization and accuracy out of the gate, all the above problems will likely disappear, and using the DJ could become the default gateway for those who aren’t quite sure what they’re in the mood for.