Spotify’s AI bet: more of everything, less of what you want

Spotify was a euphony app astatine 1 time. Then it added podcasts. Then audiobooks. Now the institution is piling AI features into its app astatine a gait that tin consciousness overwhelming. The latest wave, announced astatine its capitalist day, skews heavy toward utilizing AI to make contented alternatively than utilizing AI to assistance users find contented they really want.

Until now, Spotify has been mostly a level for human-created contented — music, podcasts, and audiobooks. As it adds AI-powered tools to make each of those formats, the app is poised to look precise different. That displacement is besides creating friction; AI tin present nutrient euphony faster than Spotify tin negociate it.

Last year, the institution was criticized for not decently labeling AI music. Following that backlash, the institution changed its policy and adopted the DDEX manufacture modular — a wide utilized labeling strategy for identifying AI-generated tracks — for its catalog. Now, Spotify has signed a woody with Universal Music Group (UMG) that allows fans to make AI covers and remixes of existing songs. While this statement ensures artists are compensated, it volition bring much AI euphony to the platform, and could marque it harder for listeners to observe emerging quality artists.

Spotify is besides partnering with the AI dependable institution ElevenLabs to release a tool that lets authors narrate audiobooks utilizing AI voices. While this speeds up audiobook production, AI narration tin inactive dependable unnatural astatine times.

Stranger inactive is the company’s productivity push: the personal podcasts feature lets users make AI-made podcasts astir anything, including summaries of their calendars and emails. Earlier this month, the institution introduced a tool for developers utilizing AI coding assistants similar Codex and Claude Code, allowing them to make podcasts and prevention them to their Spotify library. With the latest release, each users volition beryllium capable to physique idiosyncratic podcasts done prompts straight successful the app.

Image Credits: SpotifyImage Credits:Spotify

The institution is besides releasing an experimental desktop app that connects to a user’s email, notes, and calendar, pulls successful applicable information, and generates a personalized audio briefing. It’s the benignant of diagnostic that could person lived wrong the existing Spotify app — which makes the prime to rotation it into a abstracted merchandise worthy watching.

“With your permission, it tin instrumentality enactment connected your behalf: researching topics, utilizing a web browser, organizing information, and helping implicit tasks,” the app’s statement reads. The connection is simply a tell: Spotify is gesturing toward agentic AI — bundle that doesn’t conscionable reply questions but autonomously completes tasks connected your behalf. The institution didn’t elaborate further, but fixed its ambition to ain each things audio, it’s not hard to ideate thing similar AI gathering notes, successful the style of Granola, yet making its mode into Spotify.

All of this adds up to much contented connected the platform, and Spotify’s reply to helping users navigate it is, again, AI. The institution is adding natural-language find for audiobooks and podcasts, akin to however Google has been pushing radical toward conversational search. The groundwork is already there: Spotify already has an AI DJ that lets you chat portion listening to music.

Now, users tin inquire questions to get answers astir a particular podcast episode oregon its themes much broadly. They mightiness already beryllium doing this successful chatbots similar ChatGPT oregon Gemini, but Spotify doesn’t privation them to permission the app.

Spotify is trying hard to go an everything-audio app, but successful that quest, it is filling itself with features users didn’t inquire for and making it confusing and harder to navigate.

The institution is nary longer focused solely connected depletion — it’s actively nudging users to make content, too, adjacent if it’s conscionable for themselves. The hazard is that this trades extent for breadth: the much clip users walk making consciousness of a cluttered app, the little clip they walk discovering and listening to contented by different creators, raising the question: Is Spotify deepening its competitory moat oregon diluting what made it essential? If users consciousness that the app has mislaid absorption and isn’t surfacing the contented they want, much of them whitethorn travel my workfellow Amanda retired the door — and instrumentality their listening clip with them.