The Battle for AI Airwaves: Radiant’s Patrick Quinn vs. Spotify
Written by Daria P. for Kill the DJ
In 2023, Spotify launched AI DJ, which is an imitation of a radio host playing songs and commenting on them. However, not many people know that the original idea of digitizing the “vintage” medium didn’t belong to Spotify.
Spotify and plagiarism
Originally, Radiant only supported the Spotify integration. And, in order to monetize an app that’s built up on Spotify, you need their approval. We submitted our application so we could potentially start a subscription service, €1/month so we could afford to run Radiant. Spotify signed off an approval but didn’t give us the commercial approval. At that time, we didn’t realize that these approvals were different things. We started charging for Radiant. Spotify found out about us through a news article and sent us a kill notice. They took our application off their service, we got it back up, took away the paid features, and it’s been free ever since.
I discovered that Spotify employees were using the application because I could see @spotify.com domains showing up in the sign-up metadata. Back then, I was quite excited about it. I thought that Spotify were interested in the idea. I also worked with individuals with connections to Spotify. So, I knew that the company was aware of Radiant but they never contacted me about AI DJ.
I was angry at the time, to be honest — and it wasn’t that they copied my idea. Companies do it to independent developers all the time. Yeah, it stings when a big company does this without even talking to you: they could’ve just hired me instead of going off and doing this on their own. But it was the marketing language they used to describe AI DJ — it really closely matched the way we talked about Radiant on podcasts, in news articles, on our website, and so on.
And it’s very irritating to see Spotify AI DJ take off in such a big way. I understand that Spotify have reach and I don’t. But that I’ve built something that people are now loving but it’s not my thing that they’re loving — even though my thing has more functionality and has been around a lot longer. I ended up dropping Spotify support and switched to Apple Music — its users wanted a DJ too. So it’s okay, even though I’m now rolling out to a much smaller population.
I’m less angry now than I was — and not just because enough time had passed. One of the pieces of feedback that I’ve heard is that Spotify AI DJ is not as good as people were hoping it to be. I’ve had people who went off to use this Spotify AI DJ, then come back saying: “Actually, your service is so much better!”. If anything, I’m disappointed with Spotify — they could’ve done it better. I think they have a handicap since they’re beholden to the music industry and labels who want them to promote certain songs. Meanwhile, I have no allegiances to any artist or label: I’m just playing the music people want to hear. That’s our benefit and differentiator that I can continue to grow. And, as they invest more in their DJ, I’ll keep on building mine — we’ll see who wins in the end.
