This is The Guardian.

Today, the cost of the perfect Spotify playlist.

Okay, I'm getting on to Spotify now to use the AI DJ.

So it's come up with the logo in the center of it.

Listen, I'm pretty pumped about the songs I got for you today.

I know what you listen to. I see Melmoud there, so I'm going to be here every day.

Playing those artists you got in rotation, going back into your history for songs you used to love.

Using Spotify can feel uncanny these days.

There are the playlist that I've created myself.

Some of them are over 16 years old.

They're full of songs that I've shazam from the radio at some point by artists I've never heard of.

There are Scandipot playlists, R&B, the songs that remind me

of holidays or my friend's weddings, my own nostalgia. And then there's the stuff that Spotify's

curated for me. There's the day list. It changes throughout the day, predicting what mood I'll be in.

Right now, it thinks I want Pilates Princess Recession Pop, whatever that means.

And then there's the AI DJ. It's kind of like a personal radio station.

All right, switching it up. I got the music you played the most in 2023. Charlie X, CX at first.

Wow, what a cliche. Let's try him again, see if he can learn anything. Okay, moving on. Going to hit up some early 2000 stuff now,

starting with stereophonics. Okay, that is the tonal shift I was after.

The platform's designed to feel ever more personalised, while being increasingly computer-generated,

pushing us towards safe tracks that it knows we like, or inoffensive lo-fi to put on in the background.

And as the music journalist Liz Pelly has found out,

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