Illustration: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket, Getty Images
Amazon Music has announced a new AI-powered playlist feature that lets users turn text prompts into entire playlists. The service, called Maestro, is still in beta and only available to a small number of Amazon Music users of all tiers in the US on iOS and Android. You can find it on the app’s home screen or by clicking the plus button to create a new playlist.
This news follows Spotify’s recent announcement of a unique AI playlist feature designed to help users discover new music based on what they’re already listening to. Playlists are generated based on the user’s specific text prompts regarding the desired mood, situation, and genre. Soundtrack Your Brand, a global music streaming service that provides music for businesses, launched an AI playlist generator last week.
AI has been a key component of music recommendations for years, helping services like Spotify and Amazon Music recommend new songs to users. The difference now is that these new features allow streamers to create playlists based on text prompts that include sounds, activities, moods, locations, emojis, and more. Maestro responds to your prompts, creates playlists, and generates creative titles.
Like Spotify, Amazon Music has guardrails around what text prompts are allowed, excluding prompts that include offensive language or “inappropriate prompts,” according to a post on the company’s website.
Amazon Music plans to roll out Maestro to more users, but for now only a limited number of subscribers will have access to the feature. Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers can instantly listen to the playlist for free, and Amazon Prime members and customers in the free (ad-supported) tier can listen to her 30-second preview before saving the playlist. I can.
