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Spotify’s Global Head of Editorial on the ‘Art and Science’ of Playlist Curation

Spotify's global editorial head talks AI DJ, playlists, Gen Alpha and more in an interview. Sulinna Ong has led Spotify through recent tech shifts.

But in the 2020s, challengers — namely TikTok, with its potent and mysterious algorithm that serves social media users with addictive snippets of songs as they scroll — have threatened Spotify’s reign as music industry kingmaker. “Our editorial expertise is both an art and a science,” says Ong, who has led the company through its recent efforts to use technology to offer more personalized playlist options, like its AI DJ, Daylist and daily mixes. We predicted that streaming would reduce the barriers of entry in terms of language, so we see genres and artists coming from non-Western, non-English speaking countries really making an impact on the global music scene.

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