Spotify had a strong third quarter, reaching 788 million monthly active users and generating nearly €5 billion (around $5.6 billion USD) in revenue. However, the most intriguing aspect of its earnings call was the company's vision for the future of music listening and how the rise of AI agents could benefit its business.
Future of Music Listening
Co-CEO Gustav Söderström believes that Spotify is particularly well-suited for this shift. He stated, "Spotify is in one of the few categories that actually stands to thrive in the agentic age. This is because 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. Nobody asks an agent to ‘summarize a song’ for them."
Instead of manually searching for an artist and building a playlist, listeners could ask an AI assistant to curate music for them. They might request music for a run, a podcast related to their discussions with an AI, or an audiobook recap that resumes from where they left off. Spotify aims to be the go-to service for these agents, allowing users to discover music and interact with Spotify through conversations rather than solely through its app.
Integration with AI Assistants
Notably, Spotify was the first music service to integrate with Meta’s Muse assistant and also collaborates with ChatGPT and Claude. Söderström emphasized, "Our goal is to be the media service that you use from any agent, really turning the growth of agents into a tailwind rather than a headwind. That is exactly what we are seeing now. We are seeing really good adoption of Spotify inside these agents. While other companies are maybe trying to figure out what to do and many are leaning out, we are actually leaning in and participating in the growth instead of standing by the roadside and looking at it."
