Spotify bets big on AI, but users get less of what they want

Once a straightforward music streaming service, Spotify has evolved into a sprawling audio platform. It first embraced podcasts, then audiobooks. Now, the company is layering in a host of AI features at a breakneck pace that can easily overwhelm users. The latest batch, unveiled during its investor day, leans heavily toward using artificial intelligence for content generation rather than helping listeners find the music and shows they actually want.

Historically, Spotify has been a home for human-created content,songs, spoken-word episodes, and narrated books. As it rolls out AI-powered tools to generate all of these formats, the app’s identity is shifting. This transformation is already causing friction; AI can produce music faster than Spotify can manage it.

Last year, the company faced criticism for failing to label AI-generated tracks properly. In response, Spotify updated its policy and adopted the DDEX industry standard,a widely recognized labeling system for identifying synthetic audio,across its catalog. More recently, a new deal with Universal Music Group (UMG) allows fans to create AI covers and remixes of existing songs. While this agreement compensates artists, it also floods the platform with more AI content, potentially burying emerging human musicians.

Spotify is also teaming up with ElevenLabs, an AI voice company, to launch a tool that lets authors narrate audiobooks using synthetic voices. Though this speeds up production, the AI narration can still sound unnatural at times.

Perhaps more peculiar is the company’s foray into productivity. A new personal podcast feature lets users generate AI-made audio summaries of their schedules and emails. Earlier this month, Spotify introduced a tool for developers using coding assistants like Codex and Claude Code, enabling them to create podcasts and save them directly to their library. Now, all users can build these personalized audio briefs through simple prompts within the app.

The company is also testing a separate desktop app that connects to a user’s email, notes, and calendar, pulling in relevant data to generate a custom audio briefing. This functionality could easily have lived inside the main Spotify app, making the decision to spin it off into its own product a curious one.

“With your permission, it can take action on your behalf: researching topics, using a web browser, organizing information, and helping complete tasks,” the app’s description reads. That language hints at agentic AI,software that doesn’t just answer queries but autonomously performs tasks. Spotify didn’t elaborate further, but given its ambition to dominate all things audio, it’s easy to imagine features like AI-generated meeting notes eventually landing inside the app.

All of this adds up to more content on the platform, and Spotify’s solution for navigating the clutter is, once again, AI. The company is adding natural-language discovery for audiobooks and podcasts, similar to Google’s push toward conversational search. The foundation is already in place: Spotify’s AI DJ lets users chat while listening to music.

Now, users can ask questions to get answers about a specific podcast episode or its broader themes. They might already do this in chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini, but Spotify wants to keep them inside its ecosystem.

In its rush to become an everything-audio app, Spotify is packing in features users never asked for, making the interface confusing and harder to navigate. The company is no longer just about passive consumption,it’s nudging users to create content, even if only for themselves. The trade-off could be profound: the more time people spend deciphering a cluttered app, the less time they have to discover and enjoy content from other creators. This raises a critical question: Is Spotify deepening its competitive moat or diluting what made it essential? If users feel the app has lost focus and fails to surface the content they want, more of them may follow my colleague Amanda out the door,and take their listening time with them.