By Terrence O’Brien
Publication Date: 2026-03-26 20:51:00
Apple Music: “What do you want to hear?”
Me: “Atmospheric instrumental black metal for writing.”
Apple Music: “Here are three metal songs with vocals, a field recording, an electronic ambient track and a piece of doom jazz.”
I’m skeptical about the AI’s ability to deliver the music I want to start listening to, but even I was a little surprised at how disappointing Apple’s new Playlist Playground beta is. YouTube Music’s AI playlist generator is far from perfect, but when I gave it the same prompt for instrumental black metal, it didn’t provide anything with lyrics until the fifth track, and that was the exception rather than the rule. Apple Music failed to deliver from the get-go, and repeatedly.
Since I was in a metal mood yesterday, I also asked Playlist Playground to create a playlist for me with the motto “modern ambient black metal from the American South”. Apparently Apple could only find three songs that would potentially meet these criteria. And…
