Spotify wants your AI assistant to play its music, on its terms

Spotify wants your AI assistant to play its music, and it wants to stay in charge when it does. On an earnings call Thursday, co-CEO Gustav Söderström said Spotify is "unusually well positioned" for the rise of AI agents, which are assistants that act on your behalf. Spotify has deals to work inside ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude.

What changed

Last month, Spotify also announced a partnership with Meta's new AI agent, called Muse. The idea is simple. You ask an assistant to build a playlist for a run based on your listening history. The assistant passes the request to Spotify, and Spotify's own systems pick the music and play it.

Spotify built its own AI agent that can talk to outside assistants. Users can ask for music, podcasts and audiobooks through those services. Compatible assistants can also save AI-made podcast episodes privately to a user's Spotify library. Söderström wants to expand that.

The privacy trade

Söderström told investors that Spotify will not share its proprietary user data with outside AI agents. The agents bring requests to Spotify, and Spotify's systems decide what to play based on everything it knows about you.

There is a catch. Those requests can reveal interests Spotify did not know about before. "We learn more about you," Söderström said, calling it a "positive data loop for Spotify." Put plainly, what you tell a chatbot about your routines and moods can end up improving Spotify's picture of you.

Why other companies are wary

Agent tools promise a connected experience where what you do in one place carries over to another. That also helps companies build detailed files on users and raises data privacy and security concerns. Amazon said it blocked Meta's Muse agents from shopping on its platform, which shows not every company is welcoming agents.

What to do

• Check which AI apps are connected to your Spotify account.
• Look at the privacy settings in both Spotify and the assistant you use.
• Think about what personal details you type into a music request.

What happens next

Spotify is also adding AI to its own app, including a ChatGPT-like assistant and a paid add-on for AI-generated covers and remixes that has not been released yet. Spotify is betting people will still want to listen themselves, even if assistants increasingly choose the songs. How much users will share, and how Spotify will use it, is not yet clear.