I usually listen to dublab (los Angeles, cologne, and Barcelona) and nts1 (usually London) and nts2 (location rotates). They have 1 or 2 hour DJ sessions (live or recorded) and your hear some music that you normally wouldn't be exposed to and sometimes you hate it but usually not.
The significant problem that AI faces in automatically curating something is that the input data is usually pretty terrible. It's based on either similarity of the thing being curated which doesn't work because people don't want things to be too similar or to dissimilar, or it's randomness which doesn't work because it's too discordant, or it's based on patterns in the data (people who listened to X listened to Y, so recommend Y to people who listen to X) which works but only if the listener's taste aligns with the majority. If you introduce multiple sources of patterns in the data you quickly lose any variation and things stop being interesting.
This is a hard problem. No one has ever really solved it, despite Spotify, Netflix, YouTube, etc investing hundreds of millions into the space. Humans are probably just too fickle to accept that an algorithm can choose for us. It lacks the social proof that a tastemaker like a DJ brings.
I found luck just using a LLM to chat about my tastes, what I like, what kinds of songs I want to discover ... it does a good job and is able to also give me background.
So we are back to humans curating content, just with AI then doing the final search
I would love to try it however they would have to solve "global song availability" and "Sponsored songs only Stations".
But if they did try there is the chance of some niche communities forming.
It wouldn't even need to be live to begin with. A narrated playlist with a DJ and basic control functionality such as fading into songs or a voice over.
Not trivial but doable and I wonder why they never tried that.
Right now NTS Guide to: Italian Library, Soundtracks and OSTS
I avoid ghetto music but aslong as it has classical, OSTs, calm jazz, trance etc :)
A bit turned off by a certain section but I can ignore it.
aha okay, I can search for "NTS Guide to" on Spotify and people have just made playlists! Great! thanks
Otherwise a few European radios, even if with ads, as a second goal is to keep my foreign language skills up to date.
Also a few lucky algorithm gems on YouTube, or the KEXP, Tiny Desk, ARTE Concerts, Colours channels.
Never got into Spotify.
The streaming app algorithms are bland as hell, built for people who just want noise in the background.
you have to do your own search and play, but some of the stuff by unknowns and famous artists giving back is profound, they KNOW when they hit it, all live, mostly acoustic and all useing musicians, no tape, no sequencers. listen to one such performance, and maybe you dont need anything else for a week.