Let AI Help You Discover New Music

The tech industry is currently abuzz with conjecture about the utility of artificial intelligence. To people who aren't experts on the subject, AI seems like magic. In reality, most modern AI models are simply identifying patterns between inputs and outputs. But when you have enough inputs and outputs, AIs can sometimes find unintuitive patterns that we humans have a hard time comprehending — especially when the data comes in a format that we don't innately understand. To capitalize on that fact for the sake of music discovery, MIT students Danning Liang and Artem Laptiev created VBox.

VBox is like a music-streaming boombox that incorporates music discovery capabilities. The experience starts when a listener selects a genre card and inserts that into the VBox device. A song from that genre will then begin playing. As it does, an AI will analyze the music and come up with relevant keywords. Those may be obvious, like "upbeat." But they can also be more abstract, such as "angular." Those keywords scroll across a display on the front of VBox so the user can see them. If they see a keyword that resonates with them, they can select it and the AI will find another similar song with the decision weighted by the chosen keyword.

This process relies on OpenAI's ChatGPT to interpret the music. Details aren't provided about how exactly that works, but we assume that it looks at the lyrics and descriptions of the song. The music comes from Spotify and the initial genre selection is via RFID tags in the genre cards. An Arduino development board reads the RFID tag and tells Spotify — presumably running on a single-board computer — to play that genre. The Arduino also shows the keywords on an LED matrix display and reads user input through buttons and a crank. The crank attaches to a rotary encoder and lets users scroll through the keywords to find the one they want.

The AI capability is interesting, but the actual VBox device is downright gorgeous. Liang and Laptiev constructed its body using cut and bent sheet metal, giving it a modern industrial look. A leather strap up top helps to soften the aesthetic and a 3D-printed internal framework provides support for the electronic components.

We're not sure how well VBox finds relevant music, but the concept has some potential. Pedestrian similarities like genre and artist aren't very helpful in the music discovery process, so maybe AI can find connections and patterns in music taste that we wouldn't stumble upon ourselves.