Spotify has a new obsession: talking. Not just playing your music, but chatting with you about it. It is not totally new territory. The company has been dabbling in voice for a while now. Remember that AI DJ who awkwardly called you “your boy X” before cueing up 2010s party anthems? But during Spotify’s latest earnings call, we got a glimpse into what might be coming next: a smarter, chattier Spotify that does not just guess what you want, it reasons through it.
That’s right. Spotify is thinking beyond recommendations and playlists. It wants conversations. Actual back-and-forth. And AI is the magic sauce that’s going to make that happen. During Tuesday’s Q2 earnings call, Spotify’s Chief Product and Tech Officer, Gustav Söderström, hinted at a future where the streaming app feels less like a jukebox and more like a music-savvy buddy. “You can already talk to Spotify,” he said. “You are just going to see that expand.” Translation: We are entering the era of “Siri, but for vibes.”
The company says it’s collecting a whole new kind of data thanks to its voice interfaces. When users speak to Spotify, especially via its AI DJ, it does not just learn what they want to hear. It learns how you ask for it. That insight could unlock more natural, nuanced listening experiences.
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Think of it like Amazon’s “people who bought this also bought that,” but for mood, tone, and mid-conversation requests. Söderström calls it a completely new dataset, and says it is growing fast.
“We’ve always known which songs go well together,” he explained. “Now we’re learning what words lead to which songs. That’s a powerful combo.
Spotify is not just building another recommendation engine that throws Drake into your mix because you once played The Weeknd. It is eyeing reasoning-based AI, a kind of machine thinking that can consider your full listening history, past requests, moods, and even things you’ve said out loud. Yes, Spotify wants to remember your vibe, not just your volume level.
Back in May 2025, Spotify rolled out voice controls for Premium users. Press a button, speak your command, and the AI DJ switches up the genre, mood, or tracklist accordingly. That’s just phase one. Phase two? Spotify starts acting more like your musical therapist, reacting to what you say and why you might be saying it.
And it is not just for us consumers. Spotify says it is also using generative AI behind the scenes to prototype products faster, crunch numbers in finance, and generally help teams get out of spreadsheets and into actual innovation. Still, it was not all roses on the earnings call.
Spotify has now hit 276 million paying subscribers (up 12% year-over-year) and a total of 696 million monthly active users. Those are big numbers, but revenue missed the mark. The company posted a quarterly loss, and its stock took a 10% hit after CEO Daniel Ek expressed dissatisfaction with how the ads business is performing.
Which brings us back to the AI hype. Spotify’s future hinges on more than music; it is banking on intelligence, personalization, and a more responsive platform that’s built not just to play your favorite songs, but to understand your taste.
That is a lot to ask from a streaming app. But maybe, just maybe, Spotify’s chatty future can tune in to what we want, not just more music, but music that gets us. Spotify is not just building playlists anymore. It is building a personality. If the future of streaming is a conversation, will you talk back, or just keep pressing skip?
