Universal Music hires Òscar Celma, who helped build Spotify's AI DJ, as its first SVP of applied AI

Universal Music Group just hired one of the engineers behind Spotify’s AI DJ.

On September 28, 2026, UMG named Òscar Celma its Senior Vice President, Applied AI and Machine Learning, effective immediately. UMG’s announcement says he will lead how AI and machine learning get built and used across the company’s global operations, for its labels, divisions and businesses.

Billboard reports it’s the first role of its kind at UMG. Celma reports to Hannah Poferl, the Chief Data Officer UMG hired from The New York Times in January.

Òscar Celma helped build Spotify’s AI DJ, Jam and Daylist

Celma is a music recommendation person first.

As Director of Engineering at Spotify, he led the teams behind new listening features, including AI DJ, Jam and Daylist. UMG says his work there also covered personalization and discovery products used by “hundreds of millions of listeners worldwide.”

If you haven’t used it, AI DJ launched in beta in February 2023. It’s a voice that talks between songs and picks what plays next from your listening history.

Before Spotify, he spent 7 years in data science leadership at Pandora/SiriusXM, working on music discovery and recommendation. Earlier, he was a senior research scientist at Gracenote and co-founded BMAT, the Barcelona music-tech company. His last job before UMG was leading machine learning and product analytics at Condé Nast.

He also wrote the book on this, literally: Music Recommendation and Discovery, published by Springer in 2010.

What will Òscar Celma do at Universal Music Group?

The brief is broad: develop and apply AI and machine learning across UMG. Poferl’s statement is where the detail is.

“

He's built teams that have delivered and knows how to turn data at scale into useful insights. With the breadth and depth of UMG's data, there's enormous potential for him to help our teams do more for our artists.

When Poferl joined in January, UMG said she would use data and AI to drive its superfan strategy, according to Music Business Worldwide. So Celma joins UMG’s data team, reporting to the executive in charge of its superfan push.

Until now, most of UMG’s AI moves over the last 12 months were deals with other companies’ models:

You can read how each one works in my coverage of the Udio settlement, the Spotify remix deal and the ElevenLabs platform. UMG also joined Sony and Warner in buying equity in Stability AI.

It’s still fighting too. UMG and Sony filed a second lawsuit against Suno on September 18, and UMG sued DistroKid on September 15 over AI tracks passed off as human releases.

Celma framed his own job around the artist:

“I look forward to working with Hannah and leaders across UMG to advance our AI and machine learning capabilities to support human artistry,” he said in the announcement.

UMG hasn’t said what the first product with Celma’s team behind it will be. That’s the one to watch.