Will A.I. Really Take Our Jobs? — A Review of Apple Music’s New Automix Feature

Apple’s new iOS update is packed with new stuff to explore. You can change the background to your texts, the camera app got an update, etc. But, the thing that got me the most curious about this new update was a new feature on Apple music called “Automixing”. I’ve seen some examples of this feature online, and it was marketed as “the thing that will end DJs careers.” And so, as a DJ, I was very interested. Not to glaze myself, but it’s very hard to match the ear of a DJ. You have to have perfect timing and know the structure of a song well. Can a robot really replicate a DJ?

Short answer: no, not at all. But, over these past couple days, I’ve been trying this feature out and there are a lot of interesting things that I’ve noticed.

Obviously: half of the transitions (especially with Boom Bap, 70s Soul, and Jazz Rap) just start when the other song has ended or is about to finish the fade out. This makes sense, but if I really want these types of transitions, I can simply use the crossfade feature. Anyways, it still works.

What I was most interested in was sample transitions – would the AI recognize a sample from one song to another? Sadly, not really. Believe me, I tried mixing “Footsteps in The Dark” with “It Was A Good Day” & “Them Changes”. But, sadly, I just got a fadeout transition. (I’m trying this again right now and it worked differently — maybe they’ve already made upgrades?) And, I tried “Rhythm Is A Dancer” with “Don’t Tell ‘Em”. But it only works with the clean version. It still worked, but it was a fadeout transition – I assume it didn’t work that well because I have the explicit version downloaded as an MP3 on my computer, so it isn’t the Apple Music version that the AI fades. That whole dilemma is a reason why I think some of the transitions didn’t work that well for me – but this problem will definitely get solved later (It was the same thing with crossfade 2 years ago. Now, it works perfectly fine with songs in your library.)

Also, you definitely need to mix songs from more popular albums and artists for the feature to work at its best — and that’s limiting. And, some cross-genre fades that I thought would work beautifully don’t at all. (Like, I thought mixing Sly & The Family Stone’s “Everyday People” with “People Everyday” by Arrested Development would be so good. The AI didn’t even mix them.)

Another problem is the fact that some of the songs start in the middle of the track. The one thing I love about being a DJ is that I control how long the song goes for/how long people hear the song. And, I don’t like giving that control up to an AI. I think in the next update, you should be able to control if you want your song to start at the beginning or let the AI decide. 

One producer this mix feature definitely does not work for is Timbaland. Timbo is known for putting the sanre for some of his faster tracks on the 3rd beat — and it confuses the s**t out of the AI. I tried to mix Nas’s “You Owe Me” with Dua Lipa & Calvin Harris’s “One Kiss” and it was entirely off beat.

The one genre that this feature was obviously meant for is House. I tried it with 90s House, specifically. Songs like “Gypsy Woman”, “Lady (Hear Me Tonight)”,  “Around The World”, and “Music Sounds Better With You” are definitely best suited to this new automix feature.

In conclusion, this feature is definitely a step in the right direction in music listening. And, with a few tweaks (letting it be compatible with music in your library, picking when you want the track to start), this feature could be amazing. Between this feature and crossfade, the days of waiting through awkward silence for the next song to play are over. And I am very excited to see where this feature goes next.