Spotify’s AI bet: the best, the least you need

Spotify was the music app once upon a time. Then it added podcasts. Then audiobooks. Now the company is adding AI features in its software very quickly. The latest wave, announced at the investor day, is more in favor of using AI to create content rather than using AI to help users find what they want.

Until now, Spotify has been primarily a platform for human-made content – music, podcasts, and audiobooks. As it adds AI tools to create all these forms, the app is about to look completely different. This change is also creating controversy – AI can now create music faster than Spotify can.

Last year, the company was sued do not write well AI music. Following this, Spotify he changed his plan and adopted the DDEX industry standard – the most popular AI-generated music recognition system – for its team. Now Spotify has signed a deal with Universal Music Group (UMG) that allows fans to create AI covers and edit existing songs. While this deal ensures that artists are getting paid, it will bring more AI music to the platform and may make it harder for audiences to find upcoming human artists.

Spotify is also partnering with AI voice company ElevenLabs to to release the weapon which allows authors to describe audiobooks using AI voices. While this speeds up the creation of audiobooks, the AI ​​annotations can sound strange at times.

Stranger is still a corporate compulsion: The personal podcasts allows users to create AI-powered podcasts for anything, including summaries of their calendars and emails. Earlier this month, the company he introduced a weapon for developers using AI coding tools such as Codex and Claude Code, allowing them to create podcasts and save them to their Spotify library. With the latest release, all users will be able to create your own podcasts through notifications directly in the app.

The company is also releasing computer program for testing which connects to the user’s email, documents, and calendar, pulls in information, and creates a personalized summary. It’s the kind of content that could have been inside Spotify’s existing app – which makes the decision to upgrade it something worth watching.

“With your consent, it can perform actions on your behalf: search for topics, use the browser, process information, and help complete tasks,” the program’s translation reads. The language is telling: Spotify is looking to reliable AI – programs that don’t answer questions but complete tasks on your behalf. The company did not explain much, but due to the desire to have all the audio products, it is not difficult to imagine something like the AI ​​conference notes, in Granola styleeventually joined Spotify.

All of this adds a lot to the platform, and Spotify’s solution to helping users is driven by, again, AI. The company is adding natural language content for audiobooks and podcasts, similar to how Google has encouraged people to search for conversations. The basics are already there: Spotify already has an AI DJ that lets you chat while listening to music.

Now users can ask questions to get answers about a especially the podcast section or its themes more broadly. They may already be doing this on social media like ChatGPT or Gemini, but Spotify doesn’t want them to leave the app.

Spotify is trying to be an all-in-one app, but if you want this, it’s filling you with things that users didn’t ask for and making it confusing and difficult to navigate.

The company isn’t just focusing on content anymore — it’s forcing users to create content, too, even if it’s just their own. The risk is that this has a profound effect: The more time users spend using content-rich software, the less time they spend getting to know and listening to what other developers are creating. This raises the question: Is Spotify increasing its competition or reducing the factors that made it important? If users feel that the program has lost focus and does not show what they want, many of them may follow suit. my friend Amanda outside the door – and take the time to listen.