Apple’s AI Playlist Playground Struggles with Music Selection

Apple Music: “What do you want to hear?”
Me: “Atmospheric instrumental black metal to write to.”
Apple Music: “Here’s three metal songs with vocals, a field recording, an ambient electronic track, and a piece of doom jazz.”

I was already skeptical about AI’s ability to curate the music I wanted, but I was still surprised by how underwhelming Apple’s new Playlist Playground beta turned out to be. YouTube Music’s AI playlist generator isn’t perfect either, but when I asked for instrumental black metal, it took until the fifth track to throw in something with lyrics, and that was more of an exception than the norm. Apple Music, on the other hand, missed the mark right from the start and continued to do so.

Feeling in a metal mood yesterday, I prompted Playlist Playground for a playlist of “modern ambient black metal from the American South.” Apparently, Apple could only dig up three songs that might fit that description. One of those tracks was by Woman is the Earth from South Dakota. Now, I’m American, and we’re not exactly geography whizzes, but I’m pretty sure South Dakota isn’t considered the South.

Maybe Apple just isn’t tuned into black metal. So, I decided to try something simpler and asked for “kid-friendly modern hip hop.” The first track was the censored version of Kendrick Lamar’s “DNA.” You could argue that it qualifies since it’s the clean version, but still.

Next up was the censored version of Kid Capri’s “We’re Unified,” which dropped in 1998. I’m a middle-aged guy with a pretty broad definition of “modern,” but this definitely doesn’t fit. Out of the 16 songs it added, six were over 15 years old, and three were over 25 years old.

The biggest misstep was including “ABC” by Chicken P, which is essentially an alphabetical rundown of all the women he’s been with, featuring lines like, “Desiree, take dick, she be telling me ‘go deeper.’” I really don’t want my four-year-old repeating that at school.

This is especially frustrating considering the existence of soundtracks from Spider-Verse, Tyler the Creator’s The Grinch EP, and Aesop Rock.

Thinking a prompt for “industrial-influenced dance punk” would be straightforward, I was mistaken. I had two specific bands in mind, Model/Actriz and Special Interest, but neither made the cut. Instead, half the playlist was filled with classic industrial tracks: Cabaret Voltaire, Einstürzende Neubauten, Ministry, Front 242, and Nine Inch Nails all showed up. But so did New Order’s “Blue Monday” and Irish rappers Kneecap.

Playlist Playground is still in beta, so some hiccups are expected. However, based on my experience, it doesn’t seem ready for public testing yet. Even when it wasn’t failing spectacularly, the results were pretty bland and rarely introduced me to new artists. Apple didn’t respond to my request for comment.

Clearly, Apple’s AI playlist generator struggles with genre, geography, time, and lyrical content. So, I decided to give it one last shot and asked for a playlist for “School pickup on a chilly day with no children’s music.” I might as well have just put on the Garden State soundtrack (Shins, Nick Drake, José Gonzalez). At least I avoided any Parry Gripp.