Agentic AI is the AI industry’s buzzword of the moment. The companies developing it and its numerous fans on Wall Street claim that AI agents will become so popular and commonplace among users that they will eventually take over the entire economy and disrupt the business models of most industries. Spotify executives think their platform will be fine, because they are building the platform to be used in equal measure by both humans and AI agents.

“We think Spotify is unusually well positioned for the age of agentic AI,” Spotify’s co-CEO Gustav Söderström said in the company’s earnings call on Thursday morning.

There are several reasons why that’s the case, Söderström said, but the most significant is that Spotify wants AI agents to serve as another way for listeners to access its platform without giving up its direct relationship with consumers. For example, a user could ask an AI assistant to create a playlist for a run based on their listening history, but Spotify’s own systems would handle the request and provide the music, even if the request originated with another company’s AI assistant.

Söderström’s argument is that Spotify can benefit from the rise of AI agents without giving up its direct relationship with consumers. The company has built its own AI agent that can communicate with third-party assistants, allowing users to request music, podcasts, and audiobooks through those services while Spotify handles recommendations and playback.

Another use case is AI-generated podcasts. Some AI assistants can already create personalized podcast episodes based on user inquiries, whether that’s summarizing class notes for an upcoming exam or catching up on the day’s news.

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