{"id":13603,"date":"2026-06-09T08:40:03","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T12:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=13603"},"modified":"2026-06-15T07:21:02","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T11:21:02","slug":"artificial-intelligence-for-your-ears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=13603","title":{"rendered":"Artificial intelligence for your ears"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve ever marveled at a Spotify recommendation \u2014 a song matching your taste so well that it\u2019s like the music app knows you \u2014 it\u2019s likely Raphael Rezkalla \u201917 had a hand in it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe things we\u2019re doing at Spotify, nobody in the industry has done yet,\u201d says Rezkalla, a senior artificial intelligence product manager. The cutting-edge technology driving Spotify\u2019s AI makes sense of all the input that listeners provide while using the platform. He says that whereas Facebook and Instagram users join communities that signal their interests, Spotify relies on behavioral data. It analyzes how long people listen to certain artists, which songs they play all the way through, and which they skip, to infer what they might enjoy next.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rezkalla\u2019s work in training large language models \u2014 the data-gathering and processing systems at the heart of what we know as AI \u2014 uses listener input, including selected songs and created playlists, to predict future preferences. He has also contributed to Spotify\u2019s Taste Profile project (see below), which allows users to influence the algorithm by weighing in on whether Spotify\u2019s personalization attempts hit or miss the mark. \u201cWe\u2019re taking this relatively new technology and trying to apply it differently. Nobody in the industry knows if it\u2019s going to work; We\u2019re going along for the ride.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Rezkalla honed his interest in large language models as a computer engineering major in college. A TCNJ adjunct professor helped him secure his first internship at the innovative ORBCOMM, a company dedicated to ways to collect and share data. \u201cSpaceX was one of their first customers,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rezkalla\u2019s path to Spotify included an internship at Bloomberg, which he landed through a TCNJ job fair. He spent six years at Meta, working on both Facebook and Threads, and then did a stint at Palantir right before he joined Spotify.<\/span><\/p>\n

For those considering careers in AI, Rezkalla recommends specializing in either building models or maintaining the data infrastructure that supports them. \u201cYou\u2019re always going to need somebody to actually wrangle the data,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of technology under the hood that\u2019s still being built and developed, and we have to understand how people are using it,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s what gives us insight into, \u2018Did we nail the right product experience?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A SNEAK PEEK: Bringing Taste Profile to Spotify users<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say you are the parent of a preteen\u00a0 who plays DJ on car rides and is obsessed with K-pop music. Spotify may start recommending BTS and Stray Kids \u2014 even if that\u2019s not your preference. That\u2019s where Taste Profile comes in.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rezkalla has been helping to prepare the feature for launch. It was announced in March at Austin\u2019s annual South by Southwest, a premier music festival and conference for music lovers from around the world, and debuted in New Zealand ahead of an expected worldwide rollout.<\/span><\/p>\n

Taste Profile allows users to tell Spotify what they like and what they\u2019re interested in exploring. This enables a more precise algorithm that offers suggestions and even playlists via a new beta feature called Prompted Playlist, which delves into each user\u2019s history to generate curated song lists.<\/span><\/p>\n

It can even anticipate future listening needs \u2014 say, if you\u2019re training for a marathon and need playlists to fuel longer runs or if you\u2019re seeking podcasts on a certain topic. Taste Profile allows a user to provide more direct feedback to augment what\u2019s gleaned from listening habits.<\/span><\/p>\n

Photos: Bill Cardoni<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Raphael Rezkalla \u201917 is training the algorithm that knows your next favorite song.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":358,"featured_media":13628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/358"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13603"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13648,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13603\/revisions\/13648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}