Deezer unveils AI playlists in global beta – Music Business Worldwide

Music streaming platform Deezer is introducing its latest AI-powered feature, Playlist with AI, to a select group of subscribers.

The global beta launch allows 5% of paying users, selected at random, to experiment with creating personalized playlists using simple text prompts, the company announced in a blog post on Monday (July 15).

Users can now input any desired mood, genre, decade, activity, or any other imaginable description to generate a unique music selection.

“We’re excited to bring this AI-powered feature to Deezer users around the world,” said Alexandra Leloup, VP Product at Deezer. “Whether you need the perfect soundtrack for a workout, a romantic evening, or a nostalgic trip down memory lane, our Playlist with AI feature will curate a new musical experience within a matter of seconds, and offers endless possibilities to easily discover new music.”

Deezer says it has been using AI to enhance recommendations and the overall user experience across the platform with features like Flow and SongCatcher. Flow lets users create a playlist based on moods and genres, while SongCatcher lets users recognize and register a song they don’t know the name of.

“Whether you need the perfect soundtrack for a workout, a romantic evening, or a nostalgic trip down memory lane, our Playlist with AI feature will curate a new musical experience within a matter of seconds, and offers endless possibilities to easily discover new music.”

Alexandra Leloup, Deezer

While Deezer has been embracing AI integration, the company acknowledges the challenges posed by AI-generated low-quality content. Former CEO Jeronimo Folgueira last year emphasized the importance of maintaining high-quality content while exploring AI’s potential.

“There’s a lot of content now getting uploaded to our platform every week, and that number keeps growing and growing and growing,” Folgueira said during an earnings call in March 2023. “There’s a lot of duplicated content, there’s a lot of content that is not even music… and at a certain point, you get way too much content that is useless for the users. And it starts creating a bad user experience.”

“We obviously need to deal with the issue of AI as a source of a massive amount of new music or new content creation,” Folgueira said last year.

The company has removed over 26 million tracks in the months since it first launched its Universal Music Group-approved artist-centric payment system in September 2023.

The latest development comes as Deezer continues to grow its subscriber base. Its subscriber numbers grew 12.8% YoY to 10.5 million in the first quarter of 2024, from 9.3 million in Q1 2023. Revenue during Q1 increased 14.2% YoY at constant currency to EUR €132.5 million (USD $144.3 million).

The company attributed the growth to a “new wave of price increases,” as well as an improved geographic mix and the implementation of “a more selective strategy in Direct to drive premium account subscriptions by reducing trials and promotions.”

Deezer isn’t the first streaming platform to roll out an AI-powered playlist feature. Spotify in April launched its AI Playlist tool that enables users to enter a text prompt to generate music suggestions.

Recently, YouTube Music also introduced an AI-powered radio for its Premium subscribers in the US. This new feature allows users to create custom radio stations by verbally describing their desired music preferences.

Music Business Worldwide