Many companies worry that AI agents will cut them out: if an assistant does your shopping or booking, you never visit their app. Spotify is betting the opposite. On its latest earnings call, co-CEO Gustav Söderström told investors that music is one of the few things agents will make more popular, not less, TechCrunch reports.
“Nobody asks an agent to summarize a song”
Söderström’s reasoning is simple. “Agents excel at replacing and taking care of things people would rather not do. People love getting rid of chores. But entertainment is the opposite.”
So instead of opening Spotify and building a playlist yourself, you might ask your AI assistant for running music, a podcast on something you have been discussing with it, or the next part of an audiobook. Spotify wants to be the service those assistants call on.
Where Spotify already works
Spotify was the first music service to work with Meta’s Muse assistant, and it also connects to ChatGPT and Claude, according to TechCrunch. Söderström said the company is seeing “really good adoption” inside these agents.
Not every company is as open. TechCrunch points out that Amazon has blocked Meta’s Muse from shopping on its platform, an early sign of friction over which agents can use which services.
What Spotify says it can do that others cannot
Spotify’s pitch rests on years of listening history: what you replay, what you skip and what you discover. Söderström gave an ambitious example of what you could ask for:
Go through your listening history song by song back to 2008, pick your true favorites, speed them up or slow them down, sort them by key and BPM, and mix them into a running playlist at your exact cadence.
On privacy, Söderström said Spotify does not send listener data to its agent partners. The outside assistant makes a request, and Spotify’s own systems decide what to play.
The business backdrop
Spotify had a strong quarter, with 788 million monthly active users and nearly €5 billion (about $5.6 billion) in revenue.
What it means for you
If you use ChatGPT, Claude or Meta’s Muse, you can already connect Spotify and ask for music in plain language. TechCrunch’s report does not say whether this requires a paid Spotify plan, so check your account before you build a routine around it.