I usually can’t pinpoint the moment I stop using a software feature, with most tools drifting out of fashion without an expiration date. That’s not the case with YouTube Music’s “Beyond the Beat,” an AI-generated DJ that explains songs to you.
YouTube Music is my music-streaming service of choice. And since I’m a software reporter, I always enable the beta features available through YouTube Labs, which include Beyond the Beat. YouTube’s AI DJ randomly interjects for about 30 seconds between songs, teeing up the vibe shift and providing context about the next track.
More listeners are encountering synthetic commentary built into their music streaming apps. While YouTube launched this experimental AI DJ in 2025, Spotify first introduced a similar tool back in 2023. It doubled down on its AI DJ efforts in November, expanding the different personalities available to users and adding more controls over the commentary.
These AI DJs aren’t just annoying. Their attempts to provide helpful context and mimic human candor ultimately fall flat. Lucky for me, both features are optional and avoidable.
After months of leaving it enabled, a bad experience with Beyond the Beat this week pushed me to swear off AI DJs altogether. I was listening to a pop divas playlist as part of my morning workout and got slapped with 30 seconds of exposition after a Slayyyter track:
“Hey Boy delivers that high-energy surge perfectly, but we’re shifting our focus to a sharper, more visceral reality. In Rock Music, Charli XXC [sic] weaves in a biting, dark sense of humor regarding the physical toll of her relentless 2024 and 2025 touring. She turns the genuine nerve damage she sustained on the road into a strange sort of battle scar, reclaiming the exhaustion of a weary party girl as a badge of honor. It’s an unflinching look at the cost behind the spectacle, where the grind of the industry becomes the actual subject matter. Here is Rock Music by Charli XXC [sic].”
What a lengthy paragraph of platitudes with little substance. That’s not even mentioning how the AI DJ butchered the pronunciation of a little-known, indie act called Charli XCX. This flub reflected my overall experience with YouTube Music’s AI DJ. It took me out of the groove and didn’t feel additive.
In another example, it went in-depth on the meaning of Olivia Rodrigo’s Expectations remix featuring Chappell Roan, calling it a “structural interpretation” that unpacks the “nuances of queer dating.” Then YouTube Music played the original track, sans Roan; so much for the queer yearning.
Curious how Spotify’s AI DJ experience would compare, I upgraded my account to the premium tier for access to that beta software. One of the biggest recent changes to Spotify’s AI DJ was adding new voices to the lineup, so I went into my settings and played the introduction clips for each of the eight English-language voices.
Maybe I was already a bit miffed from my YouTube Music experience because these voices immediately started to frustrate me. Multiple voices leaned into filler words such as “you know” and “like,” as the AI described the next songs it would play. Knowing an AI voice is being trained to use filler words to sound more human gave me the uncanny-valley ick.
Spotify’s AI DJ was fairly different from YouTube Music’s version. On Spotify, the AI DJ is also an algorithmically guided experience that picks songs for you based on past listening habits and song requests. Overall, Spotify’s synthetic commentary felt tighter and more tolerable than YouTube’s blabbering DJ. That said, neither software experience was enjoyable enough for me to return.
Although Spotify claims it has “80 percent of listeners coming back to DJ week after week,” according to the company’s launch blog, I won’t be one of them. My rejection of AI DJs isn’t based on how they audibly sound. The voices, from both companies, are decent and sound convincingly human. The content of their commentary is what truly turns me off. Whether it’s empty platitudes or mimicking human mistakes, I’ve heard enough.
