Spotify just took the fight for marketshare personal with a new personalized DJ feature called “DJ X” powered by artificial intelligence.
In a statement released on Wednesday February 22, 2023, Spotify said, “the DJ is a personalized AI guide that knows you and your music taste so well that it can choose what to play for you.”
The new in app feature, curates music and adds commentary like a radio DJ based on your favorite “tracks and artists with a realistic voice that gives SiriusXM’s Sway and Power 105’s DJ Envy a run for their money.
Game over. Can’t just be playing music. This DJ even has a personality that sounds like Sway.
— JR (@jrwatkis) February 22, 2023
Some of the other perks of the new feature include sorting through the latest music and look back at some of your old favorites—maybe even resurfacing that song you haven’t listened to for years and it is open to your feedback kinda like a 1990s radio request line.
The partnership to make this generative Ai was with ChatGPT founders Open AI, which is owned by Elon Musk and gained a million uses within 3 days.
A realistic AI voice comes from Spotify’s recent acquisition of Sonantic.
DJ ‘X’ is Spotify’s answer in the race for streaming marketshare after YouTube Music launched “Radio Builder” last Tuesday (February 14) which is a music “music tuner” built in YouTube Music’s homepage in the iOS or Android app.
Aside from the ridiculous name, Radio Builder is limited however in that it only allows users to choose 30 artists with a choice to hear artists similar to those. There is no DJ and it requires uses to tell it what to play. Hardly an innovation, station suggestions include “plays upbeat music” or “play a catalogue.”
YouTube started testing the feature last year but now with Spotify’s interactive intelligent DJ “X,” the Lyor Cohen run entity will have to revisit the drawing board.
Spotify got a new major shareholder recently in the form of Activist investor Value Act Capital who made a sizable investment in the company weeks after a 6% staff cut was announced by the streaming platform’s CEO.
Value act is known for putting pressure on management and had sold its interest in the luxury car brand Rolls Royce in 2020, 5 years after building a 10% stake in the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index company (FTSE) .
Their investment in Spotify is based on a belief that streaming will grow in the coming years as the platform enters new markets beyond the boom years.
“Spotify’s superpower was combining engineering breakthroughs with organizational abilities — it organized creators and copyright owners to build an entirely new economic model that benefited everyone involved,” Mason Morfit, head of the San Francisco-based investment firm said.
“During the boom, it applied these powers to new markets like podcasts, audiobooks and live chat rooms. Its operating expenses and funding for content exploded. It is now sorting out what was built to last and what was built for the bubble,”
“During the boom, it applied these powers to new markets like podcasts, audiobooks and live chat rooms. Its operating expenses and funding for content exploded. It is now sorting out what was built to last and what was built for the bubble.”
As Spotify contend with keeping their new shareholder happy, the company released a statement saying, “we welcome Value Act as an investor in Spotify.”
Spotify announced that 500 people will lose their jobs from the European company and they aim to become a more “efficient company.” The Daniel EK company lost €430mn last year.
With nearly 500 million users, a Morgan Stanley analyst said they believed speed and efficiency is possible for Spotify “2023 will be the year this business finally marries the consistently strong user and revenue growth trends it has posted for years with a ramp towards meaningful profitability”.
Meanwhile, after nearly ten years as head of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki is steps down to give way to a new era of the world’s most used streaming platform. In a memo the 54 year old Wojcicki stated that she, “decided to step back from my role as the head of YouTube and start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects I’m passionate about.
Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Head of Product will succeed her in the role as SVP and YouTube CEO.
During Wojcicki tenure at YouTube, the company contributed up to ten percent of parent company Alphabet’s revenue since the YouTube was purchased by Google for $1.65Bn in 2006. Last year the streaming website generated $29.2bn in advertising revenue
In the last two years YouTube has paid out more than 10 billion dollars to artist and content creators according to Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s head of music.
In 2021 alone the company paid out $6 billion to rights holder and creators.
Between 2021 and 2021 YouTube paid $4B directly to the music industry according to Cohen the former head of Hip Hop music label Def Jam..
“Our foot is still planted on the gas pedal: In the 12 months between July 2021 and June 2022, YouTube paid over $6B to the music industry. This is a $2B increase from the $4B contribution we announced in 2021,” he said.
Lyor says YouTube’s mission is to make their ads and subscriptions model the #1 contributor of revenue to the industry by 2025.
Previously shorts were not monetized but as of today, YouTube is monetizing all music formats (short & long form video, audio tracks, live, etc.), on all platforms (desktop, tablet, mobile, and TV), in over 100 countries.
Announcements made by Cohen in his newsletter stated:
“UGC(User Generated Content) drove over 30% of payouts for artists, songwriters, and rights-holders, for the second year in a row.”
Shorts he says generates ’30 billion views per day’, as he announced YouTube’s $100M Shorts Fund.
YouTube is the largest music platform in the world with over 2.3 billion users and one of the largest social media platforms, second only to Facebook, according to Statista.
Artists and labels have often decried the service’s royalty rates, typically far lower than those offered by Spotify or Apple Music; YouTube’s defenders argue it’s still an improvement over radio, which has historically paid recording artists nothing, compensating songwriters only.
Jamaica & YouTube
Over the last year, Jamaica saw more artists than ever moving from obscurity to celebrity and commanding more than $50,000 per show from their YouTube hits.
Skeng, who scored several Jamaican YouTube hits last year got 2 collabs with Nicki Minaj due to the success on his songs Protocol and Gvman Shift which are the top two YouTube songs in Jamaica on the platform.
Skeng told World Music Views exclusively that working with the Queen New York MC is a blessing.
He said, “Nicki Minaj and Skeng Likkle Miss Remix is a good look. Is not everybody weh me meet pon dah music journey yah who show interest or believe inah me. Me try only give my energy to the ones who show the truth.”
“Working with Nicky is an achievement and a blessing. Dancehall active you see it,” he continued.
The Ratty Gand DJ was also the No. 1 YouTube artist in Jamaica for most of 2022 with 100 million streams across his catalogue.
He signed a publishing deal with with Geejam Music last year from the success of his YouTube hits.
