Apple Music Lacks Spotify's ChatGPT Integration And That's A Problem

In a Substack post, OpenAI's CEO of Applications Fidji Simo wrote an article talking about how ChatGPT is evolving from a text-based product into something more intuitive and connected. One of the ways the company is doing that is by connecting third-party apps into the platform. Earlier this year, OpenAI introduced experiences with Booking, Canva, Coursera, Expedia, Figma, Spotify, and Zillow.

To expand on these initiatives, Simo announced that more apps would soon be available in a new directory, including Adobe, Airtable, Clay, Lovable, OpenTable, Replit, and Salesforce. More interesting, a first version of this post revealed that Apple Music would also be part of ChatGPT integration. While mentions of Apple Music have been deleted from the original post, it looks like Apple or OpenAI weren't ready to announce this partnership, even though it should be coming soon.

After all, OpenAI is a key Apple partner and, so far, it's the only third-party model that can tap Apple Intelligence. By connecting your ChatGPT account with Apple Intelligence, Siri gets powered up with everything ChatGPT can do. That means instead of getting a "Sorry, I can't do that," Siri taps ChatGPT to improve Writing Tools, answer queries, create images, and more. As it seems, the next frontier is Apple Music integration, which should make it better for song recommendations.

Using Spotify with ChatGPT is as straightforward as you would hope. The first time you mention Spotify to ChatGPT in a chat, the platform will prompt you to connect your account so it can personalize recommendations and playlists. With access to your usage and music taste, you can start with a prompt like "make a playlist for my morning commute," or "find songs similar to my 2016 favorites."

ChatGPT can also offer personalized music and podcast suggestions through conversation, which users can refine by mood, genre, or activity. Once the playlist is ready, users can tap Spotify to start listening to their curated playlists. More interestingly, users can also create with Canva (or ChatGPT's own image generator) special covers to match their playlist's vibes.

While this brings a new layer of interactivity to Spotify users, the company's own algorithm is already on point with suggestions, smart playlists, and so on. However, these simple features available with the ChatGPT integration could be key to make the Apple Music experience even more interesting, as AI is not Apple's best strength.

Over the years, Apple Music has not only improved its own algorithm, but it has also continued to rely on curated playlists. Still, Apple Music's algorithm isn't as accurate as Spotify, and once you ask the service to play your personal radio station, it eventually produces bad recommendations. This is where ChatGPT should be able to shine and understand the nuances of a playlist you heard non-stop, but you now want a new selection of similar (but completely different) songs.

Besides that, being able to exchange information with ChatGPT about your favorite songs, artists, and albums can be a great way to discover hidden gems or new artists. Doing all of that while having a natural conversation will also improve the Apple Music experience, as the service still has several inconsistencies, aside from non-stop issues with the HomePod speaker.

One thing is for sure, ChatGPT has become a fundamental tool for iPhone users, and Apple Music subscribers will soon be able to have a better experience with a sharper algorithm. BGR will let you know once this partnership becomes available, and how to take the most out of it.