Spotify is adding yet another AI button. This time it is a conversational assistant - something like ChatGPT, built straight into the app, that users can talk to in order to find music, podcasts or audiobooks. You type or you speak, and the assistant answers, suggests, remembers what you have listened to and tells you when an album dropped or what it drew its inspiration from.

The feature is in beta for now, only for Premium subscribers, on iOS and Android, and only in three countries - the US, Ireland and Sweden - for users over 18 who communicate in English. Macedonia, as usual, waits. The technology, they say, combines Spotify's own systems with models from several outside suppliers, picked according to the task.

This is not the first time Spotify has pushed artificial intelligence into listeners' ears. First came an AI DJ that talks out loud, then a tool for building playlists through text prompts. Each of them was announced as a step forward. Each of them, in fact, does one and the same thing: it keeps you in the app longer and collects more data on what you want.

The question for the listener is simple. Do you really need a conversation with an app to find a song - or do you just want to hit play? There was a time when the record-shop clerk recommended you an album because he knew you. Now the algorithm recommends because it measures you. The difference is not small, it is just well hidden behind the friendly tone.