Spotify's AI playlists are good — but here's how to supercharge them with ChatGPT

With the entirety of recorded music history at my fingertips, where do I even begin? This is a modern listener’s dilemma. When presented with infinite options, our brains can enter a state of decision paralysis.

Luckily, features like Discover Weekly and the AI DJ made discovering music way easier. You can sit back and let them do the work. But lately, I’ve hit a wall.

Spotify’s AI is an incredibly clever pattern-matching machine. It’s great at giving me more of what it already knows I enjoy, but it falls short when I want something truly new, something based on an idea, a story, or a feeling it can’t quantify.

However, Spotify’s new integration with ChatGPT is the missing link I didn’t know I needed.

Here's how you can supercharge your Spotify playlists with ChatGPT.

What Spotify's AI gets right and where it hits a wall

Before we dive into the future, it’s important to appreciate the genius of Spotify’s discovery and recommendation engine. It’s a marvel of data science.

The platform’s AI, which processes at least half a trillion events daily, is built on a few key pillars.

The first is collaborative filtering. It's the idea that if you and I both love Maroon 5 and Coldplay, you might also like the new The Life of a Showgirl that I’ve had on repeat.

The second is deep learning, a type of AI that recognizes complex patterns in enormous amounts of data. Every save, playlist add, and skip within the first 30 seconds is a signal that refines its model of your taste.

For all its brilliance, however, this system is an echo chamber. Because it’s optimized to keep you listening, it often defaults to what’s safe and popular, creating a bias that favors mainstream artists over niche or independent creators.

Many users, myself included, have noticed its tendency to get stuck in a rut, recommending the same handful of songs across different playlists. This isn't necessarily a flaw but rather a byproduct of a business model designed for mass-market engagement.

The safest way to keep millions of users on the platform is to serve them with what is statistically likely to be acceptable.

ChatGPT is a world-class AI and is known to understand natural language, context, and creative intent.

You can ask for “music that feels like a rainy day in a cyberpunk city,” and ChatGPT translates those cross-domain concepts into a sonic palette.

While Spotify has AI playlists, ChatGPT's interface feels more intuitive to me.

Getting started is simple.

1. Open the ChatGPT app or website and begin a new chat.
2. Ask for a playlist and mention the Spotify keyword.
3. The first time you do this, ChatGPT will prompt you to connect to your Spotify account.
4. From now on, when you ask for music or podcasts, ChatGPT will generate results you can interact with and open directly on Spotify.

Free users can use the integration as a search and discovery tool. You can ask ChatGPT to find specific songs, artists, or existing Spotify-curated playlists. It’s a way to navigate Spotify’s catalog conversationally.

Premium users can have Spotify turn their creative and abstract prompts into a fresh, fully personalized playlist of tracks.

A few limitations to be aware of in the new integration

The technology is still in its early days, and there are a few quirks. I found that many of the generated playlists tended to favor an artist's more popular songs.

If you’re after something more niche, you’ll need to spell that out in your prompt.

Also, while its contextual understanding is light-years ahead of other AIs, it's not infallible.

Finally, the feature is currently available only in English, so if you’re after songs or podcasts in another language, you’ll have to wait a bit longer.

Understanding the privacy policies between Spotify and OpenAI

Whenever we connect powerful services like these, questions about data and privacy are natural. Thankfully, Spotify and OpenAI have been transparent and reassuring on this front.

First and foremost, connecting your Spotify account to ChatGPT is voluntary. You are always in control and can disconnect the integration at any time through your account settings.

Most importantly, Spotify has made it clear that while ChatGPT can access your listening history to inform its recommendations, Spotify will not share music, podcasts, or any other audio or video content with OpenAI for training purposes.

Your personal listening habits don’t become training data for future AI models and, critically, that artists’ and creators’ work stays protected within Spotify’s ecosystem.

Finding your next favorite song or genre is easier than ever

Go ahead and experiment, but think like a creative director, not a search engine user.

Instead of asking for sad songs, tell ChatGPT why you're sad, what kind of sad it is, and what you want the music to do.

See what your personal music curator brings you. I think you’ll be amazed at what you discover.

It's nice to see Spotify is stepping up its game with exciting new upgrades. It raises the bar for switching to alternatives.