With the release of Spotify's new AI Playlists feature, we couldn't resist pitting it against our own AI-powered song search and playlisting engine, Songhunt. Here's how they measure up:
For our head-to-head comparative strengths and features overview, we ran prompts like:
Here's what we discovered:
Spotify’s AI tends to prioritize popular/trending artists and user behavior, leaning heavily on what's hot and what users are already listening to. In contrast, Songhunt specializes in content-based recommendations, focusing on deep analysis of the song (musically, sonically and lyrically). This approach delivers more accurate and diverse recommendations, pushing users beyond the familiar safety net of mainstream hits and chart-toppers.
But it's not just about the recommendations – it's about the journey to find them. Songhunt offers a more transparent, hands-on search experience. In addition to free-text natural-language prompts, users can refine their searches using comprehensive lyrical and musical filters/tags. This level of active customization sets Songhunt apart from Spotify's Playlist AI interface, which exclusively relies on free-text prompts and refinements.
Songhunt also gives special attention to song narrative and writing style. Many playlists are theme-driven, and Spotify’s AI doesn’t seem as strong at searching by specific narrative themes (such as ‘sustainability’ or ‘social media’). We found Songhunt's advanced lyrical analysis and similarity search outperform Spotify's, both in terms of thematic relevance and writing style.
Bottom line: While Spotify's foray into the AI domain is undoubtedly an intriguing and exciting move for existing users, Songhunt's tailored experience and its commitment to deep AI analysis and content-based recommendations continue to set it apart in the new music discovery game.
With Amazon Music announcing the launch of Maestro, its own AI playlist generator, it's clear the AI song search revolution is gaining momentum. We're eager to see which other companies follow suit, and will be sure to conduct more head-to-head comparisons as new contenders emerge!