A diluted synopsis of radio, music and AI

So to start out this little write-up, I recently started a part-time job at Walmart while I go to collage. Every once in a while the poor sound quality speakers in the store after playing music will say "this is Sam's club, Walmart radio". And ever since I started this job it honestly triggers me. So from lastly the roughly 6 months or so, I have gotten into amateur radio and built my very humble station. And at least once a day the loudspeaker at my daytime gig, would say "Walmart radio" and the term radio actually means.

1

: of, relating to, or operated by radiant energy

2

: of or relating to electric currents or phenomena (such as electromagnetic radiation) of frequencies between about 3000 hertz and 300 gigahertz

3

a

: of, relating to, or used in radio or a radio set

b

: specializing in radio or associated with the radio industry

c(1)

: transmitted by radio

(2)

: making or participating in radio broadcasts

d

: controlled or directed by radio

None of these apply to Walmart's "radio".

And it honestly bastardizes the meaning of radio!

To continue this thought, just like many enshitifide company's modern day. They have began using AI and pushing employees to use it, the HR person whom shall not be named. Told a room full of new hires "in the Walmart app there is this little icon, this calls spark Walmart's AI assistant. If you are having issues or trying to find something you can ask spark" and I personally felt my soul leave my body. Learn something? Try something new? NOOOOOO that's bad ASK the LLM!

Something me and a few of my fellow workers talked about was how useless and wasteful this is.

I would personally have somebody show me how to do something or figure it out on my own, then have a slop machine spew some "I'm pretty that's right at me" information.

We later started talking about Walmart "radio" and I still have not told people at work im a licensed radio operator. But there was this organic conversation that was spun up about "what does music and algorithms correlates"

Let me try my best to explain.

So many, many people listen to music. IN FACT roughly 83% of the world enjoys music!

But about 3 years ago at this point, gave me a very interesting thought. We all have these music streaming services, and media services. Like YouTube, Pandora, Spotify and many others all have autoplay. But here is the question this whole article I wrote is about. "Where does AI or algorithms become a conflict of interest to your personal music, and media identity"

For example lets say we walk to listen to Believer by Smash Mouth (yes, yes the one song from shrek).

You listen to the song, then the algorithm depending on the platform does a few things.

it may, look at the song and look at what other users listened to after that song and pick that. It may look for tags that match these songs tags, like rock or movie music. Then theirs the more conspiratorial side, which I'm not going to humor at this time.

But ever since 3 years ago when I started buying boxes of CD's and going to concerts and getting CD's of the bands I enjoy. It made me kinda realize more about algorithms, there is a lot of music I would have never bought or listened too. Because it was category of music I disliked, but because I would shuffle my whole collection and listen. I found music I really enjoy! Which brings me to the point of asking if I never decided to get CD's I would have never found these Bands I enjoy. So this is a little out there, but I like dumb autoplay! It lets me decide and go NOPE don't like this, and others that I try and enjoy.

I would heavily recommend navidrome, if you have a growing music collection and want to self-host a Spotify like experience.

Which now leads me to today, I was looking for a new navidrome client because i just wasn't happy with the interface of the other one I was using.

So i ended up going to the handy Navidrome clients list and stumbled upon a project I do not know how I feel about it.

There is a program called Sub/Wave

Imagine you take your music collection, and then plug a LLM into it.

You can send it requests or vague descriptions like "play me something fun or silly"

And it will pick a song from your catalog, also having support for your radio host LLM to use TTS

Saying the quib's like "Next up is ACDC's back in black".

And I'm so conflicted, I don't like AI. I don't like algorithms telling me what to like, but I think it is just a little neat. And kind of weird project that I want to know what other spacers think about it?

Here's a link if you want to delve down the rabbit hole as well

https://www.getsubwave.com/

also I must add I am in no way endorsing or affiliated with this project.