Spotify had a strong third quarter, reaching 788 million monthly active users and generating nearly 5 billion euros (about $5.6 billion) in revenue. But the more interesting part of the earnings call was how the company sees people listening to music in the future, and why the rise of AI agents could be good news for its business.
Co-CEO Gustav Söderström believes music streaming giants are particularly well suited for this change.
“Spotify is one of the few categories that can actually grow during the agent years,” Söderstrom tells investors. “This is because agents are great at substituting or handling things that people don’t want to do. People love to take the clutter out of them. But entertainment is the opposite. No one asks an agent to, ‘Please summarize the song.’ ”
Instead of opening Spotify, searching for artists, and creating playlists themselves, listeners can ask an AI assistant to do the work for them. They might want music for running, a podcast about what they talked about with an AI, or an audiobook summary that lets them pick up exactly where they left off.
Spotify wants to become the go-to service for agents, allowing people to discover music and interact with Spotify through conversations, not just its own app. Notably, Spotify is the first music service to integrate with Meta’s Muse assistant, which also integrates with ChatGPT and Claude.
“Our goal is to be the go-to media service for every agent and actually turn agency growth into a tailwind rather than a headwind. That’s exactly what we’re seeing right now. We’re seeing it being implemented well. Maybe other companies are figuring out what to do, and while a lot of companies are hunkering down, we’re actually leaning in and participating in the growth, rather than standing on the sidelines and watching it.”
There are already signs of friction in the market over how agents access third-party services. For example, Amazon blocked Meta’s Muse from shopping on its platform. It shows how leading companies restrict external agencies when questions arise regarding access, security, privacy or commercial controls.
Spotify’s pitch isn’t just about making it easier to find entertainment through AI. The experience should also be more personal.
Söderström says that Spotify today is “an intelligent media service encapsulated as an agent, whether you use it directly through an application or through another agent. Spotify is now an agent that you can talk to, ask questions, and direct, rather than just clicking within the app. Today we can do things that other media services can’t do.”
“For example, you can ask Spotify to go through your listening history song by song going all the way back to 2008, select your favorites, beat-stretch them by speeding them up or slowing them down, and sort them by key or BPM. Then you can ask Spotify to mix them into your perfect running playlist with precise rhythms,” Söderström explained.
Spotify has years of listening history, including the artists people listen to again and again, the songs they skip, and the music they discover. This information helps us recommend more personalized playlists than the generic playlists generated by AI assistants that don’t know much about your preferences.
However, Söderström also emphasized that Spotify does not send listener data to its partners. Instead, the agent requests something from Spotify, and Spotify uses its own systems to reason about that request and choose what to play.
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