Spotify listeners might not wake up on a Monday and describe their music mood as a “stank face heavy Monday morning” or declare the end of their week a “jam band crunchy Friday afternoon,” but the Spotify’s specially curated “daylists” generate these sometimes bewildering soundtracks in effort to match listeners taste and expose them to new music.

The daylist updates throughout the day, suggesting personalised music and microgenres based on listeners’ streaming history. For instance, one might start off with a “soiree electro house Thursday early morning,” but after an update they might be having a “crashout nonchalant Thursday afternoon” and finally a “twinkly math rock Thursday night” (all real daylist titles).

Malorie Nguyen, a senior art and design major at LSU, began posting pictures of her daylists on her Instagram story when she first noticed their eclectic titles.

“I like when they have funky names because it’s just more fun,” Nguyen said. “I feel like the ones that I post are the ones I don’t think other people are getting, so it’s something different for them to see and funny for me to post.”

What few listeners realize is that these hyper-specialized playlists and their wacky titles are a product of artificial intelligence. Spotify has successfully begun incorporating AI into features including the AI DJ, AI Playlist and Spotfy Wrapped. According to Spotify, 70% of daylist listeners return to their ever-changing playlists each week.

The platform also says it is one of the “most popular Spotify features that drives discovery,” but some listeners like Nguyen don’t necessarily expect to broaden their music horizons when playing their daylists.

“I feel like it should recommend more to me, but it doesn’t,” Nguyen said. “Right now it’s ‘indie chill granola vibes morning,’ but like half of these are my liked songs. It’s not really giving me anything that’s new.”

Like Nguyen, Olivia Vall, a junior mass communication major at LSU, enjoys reading the titles of her daylists and occasionally sharing it with friends. However, she feels that some of the song selections on the list are based on a tiny fraction of her listening, and the rest of the soundtrack is just hit music.

“I just feel like you could listen to like two songs, and then the whole daylist is overpowered by them,” Vall said. “The other half are just popular songs that don’t mesh well.”

Vall recently purchased a DJ turntable to practise mixing music, but she typically avoids her daylist when she needs inspiration. Instead of promoting niche or hyper-personalized music, she finds that her daylist repeatedly displays many of the same artists. Vall’s concern is that the algorithm used to curate Spotify’s daylist could be prioritizing certain mainstream artists or songs.

Vall’s concerns may be partially valid. Spotify uses a program called Discovery Mode, in which the platform agrees to prioritize particular songs in their algorithm in exchange for a 30% commission on streams in “discovery mode contexts.” These contexts include Spotify Radio, Autoplay, and Spotify Mixes, of which the daylist falls under.

While this allows artists to promote select tracks in effort to boost their overall streams, it could harm smaller artists unable to afford Spotify’s 30% cut. This may impact the songs users see when they open their daylists, and lawmakers have requested more information on Spotify’s Discovery Mode.

Some Spotify users avoid the daylist completely and stick to the other features like the release radar, daily mixes, and suggested artists. Bryson Huynh falls into this category of listener. In 2024 he listened to 237,991 minutes of music on Spotify (which converts to a little over 165 days), yet almost none of his time was spent listening to his daylist.

“I don’t know, I don’t really connect with the titles,” Huynh said. “They’re just too random and weird sometimes, and it kind of turns me away.”

While the daylists do have eye-catching, post-worthy titles, it is still up for debate on whether this feature actually provides listeners with the most personalized music. Perhaps some users just aren’t up for the “Spanish trap lunch evening,” “trippy alien Monday afternoon” or “lacrosse pregaming Tuesday morning” that Spotify offers them.