Apple and Google have never shied away from playful banter with each other, but Google’s Eric Schmidt took things a step further in a recent interview with the BBC when he claimed that Apple Music is completely outdated. According to him, Apple’s decision to use human DJs to pick songs for its music streaming service instead of artificial intelligence was an elitist move that’s much less democratic than what Spotify and other competing services use.
Google’s Eric Schmidt has suggested that Apple’s music streaming service is a decade out of date by enlisting human DJs rather than artificial intelligence to pick songs. The chairman of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, said using software to recommend songs to listeners was “less elitist” and “much more democratic”. Although Schmidt, did not mention Apple Music by name, his comments come just a few months after Apple Music, the company’s answer to Spotify and other streaming services, was launched. Unlike Spotify and Google’s own music streaming service, Apple Music puts together playlists and runs its Beats 1 Radio Station with a team made up of hundreds of human editors. These include big names such as former Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe, as well as celebrity guest editors such as Pharrell and Dr Dre. Spotify, meanwhile, has invested heavily in software that “learns” a user’s musical tastes to create personalised playlists. “Algorithms don’t understand the subtlety and the mixing of genres,” Apple Music executive Jimmy Iovine said when Apple Music launched.
