Spotify wants AI assistants to bring listeners to its catalog while its own systems choose what they hear, a strategy co-CEO Gustav Söderström outlined on Oct. 22.
The route places an outside assistant between a listener and Spotify’s library. A user can make a request in a conversation, after which the assistant passes it to Spotify and the streaming service selects the audio. Spotify’s existing integrations include Meta’s Muse, ChatGPT and Claude.
At the company’s third-quarter earnings call, Söderström said, “Our goal is to be the media service that you use from any agent.” He described AI as useful for everyday tasks people prefer to avoid, while saying people want to experience entertainment themselves. Söderström also said partner agents do not receive Spotify listener data. The service can still draw on listening history internally to tailor choices, he said.
That history can reflect years of listening, including artists a person returns to, tracks they skip and new music they discover. Söderström illustrated the approach with a running mix built from favorites dating to 2008. Spotify could change track speed, group the songs according to key and beats per minute, and tune the playlist to the runner’s cadence, he said. Söderström also described creating a personal podcast from a topic discussed with an assistant and recapping an audiobook up to where the listener stopped.
In Söderström’s framing, a listener could hand off some searching and organizing to an assistant without giving it Spotify’s listening record. The outside tool carries the request; Spotify remains responsible for choosing the audio, he said. The company reported 788 million monthly active users at the close of the third quarter.
