A Spotify patent reveals exciting new user-influenced playlists could be coming.

Ever wanted to host your own radio station? Presenting a playlist of songs that you’ve curated especially to take listeners on a journey, interspersed with stories and facts between the songs to create a narrative through the musical path.

Spotify applied for a patent last week for “a system for generating and distributing a digital mixtape”. The description suggests that this digital mixtape will allow users to intersperse their own audio recordings into the digital mixtape. That sounds an awful lot like the ability to host your own mixtape-version of a radio show.

The patent describes that the mixtape can be generated from user commands, suggesting AI generated playlists. It adds that users will also be able define the music compilation, though it’s not clear whether that means the playlist must be generated from a command and can be tweaked, or whether there is an option to create the playlist from scratch to add your recordings to.

The description from the patent reads:

The system can receive a user command to generate a digital mixtape including a user-defined compilation of music. The user command identifies a recipient of the digital mixtape and identifies one or more media content items to be included in the music compilation for the recipient. The digital mixtape can also include audio recordings from the user to be added to the digital mixtape.

The patent application doesn’t clearly state how personalised audio recordings might work. It seems that sharing the mixtape with friends is an integral part of the product, so these recordings may simply be for the person you’re sending to and might not be able to be applied into a publicly shared/saved playlist.

There are even suggestions in the patent that a “mixtape application” will need to be installed to receive and listen to the mixtapes friends sent you.

It certainly hints that there is truth in recent rumours of Spotify looking to launch AI tools for users, specifically with the rumoured launch of their Supremium tier. Whether it represents something like Pandora Stories or a completely new beast, we’ll have to wait and find out.