Spotify depends extra on AI and delivers on its promise to succeed in 1 billion energetic customers by 2030.
On the firm’s investor day in New York on Thursday, executives outlined the deliberate path to reaching that determine, in addition to $100 billion in annual income, with new options together with the power to create personalised AI-generated podcasts, user-generated covers and remixes utilizing AI and rather more. Spotify additionally plans to proceed creating extra add-on companies or paid subscriptions, alongside its audiobook providing, which they are saying has been certainly one of its most engaged segments on the platform.
As co-CEO Gustav Söderström defined, to start with, the corporate’s motto was entry. Spotify then moved into personalization, with curated playlists and extra. The following step is “technology,” which leverages AI instruments to assist create content material on the platform.
“We’re getting into the generational period, the place the expertise just isn’t merely chosen from a catalog. It’s formed by every of our customers, in actual time, primarily based on their tastes, context and intentions. At this time, there isn’t a media participant for private and non-private content material – or, in different phrases, there isn’t a media participant for the generative period. We imagine that Spotify will grow to be that,” mentioned Gustav Söderström, co-CEO of Spotify.
Personalised podcasts and user-generated covers and remixes be a part of current personalization merchandise on Spotify, together with AI DJ, which creates curated playlists for the consumer, and visitor playlists. Spotify additionally unveiled a desktop app that may create a day by day audio briefing or podcast primarily based on the consumer’s emails and calendar.
The thought by leveraging AI and providing extra personalised merchandise is to assist enhance retention, conversion to paid subscription and time spent on the platform, as Spotify positive factors a greater understanding of the person. AI will also be used so as to add extra content material in every market’s language and make it faster to localize.
Nicole Burrow, Vice President of Design at Spotify, speaks on stage through the Spotify Investor Day 2026 morning keynote at Highline Studios on Might 21, 2026 in New York.
Presently, the corporate final reported 761 million month-to-month energetic customers worldwide, together with 293 million subscribers. Annual income was roughly $18.5 billion in 2025. Spotify highlighted the potential for future consumer progress in Brazil, India, and the Philippines, amongst different markets.
Amid speak of AI, the corporate additionally introduced that its Audiobooks section is on monitor to succeed in $100 million in annualized recurring income from Audiobooks+ subscriptions in July. Paid customers have already got entry to fifteen hours of free audiobook content material, with the Audiobooks+ add-on subscription giving them a further 15 hours. In lower than a 12 months, greater than one million customers are already paying for audiobooks, in line with Spotify.
It additionally noticed one of many deepest ongoing engagements on Spotify, which is a metric the corporate is monitoring transferring ahead.
“The variety of instances you come again to us over the course of a month and the variety of gadgets you utilize could possibly be among the many most necessary metrics we monitor,” Nördstrom mentioned.
On Thursday, the corporate additionally introduced the creation of extra tiers for its audiobook providing, which provide extra hours for a better worth. That is a part of a plan to extend the quantity of income generated from already subscribed customers. The corporate lately launched health, by way of a partnership with Peloton to stream movies on the platform. which executives say has the “potential to grow to be a big vertical in its personal proper.” Executives additionally mentioned they’re contemplating a number of different future verticals.
Podcasting has additionally “made vital progress,” in line with CFO Christian Luiga, who described the section’s gross margin as “deeply adverse” in 2021 and anticipated to succeed in 20% in 2026. He added that the corporate sees “a path to a 40% gross margin, which will probably be pushed by each first-party and third-party content material.”
With the extra add-ons and new options, there will probably be additional worth will increase finally, however executives famous there was little churn with earlier will increase.
“You possibly can anticipate us to proceed this journey. However we all the time need the consumer to win,” Nördström mentioned of the worth will increase.
For the second and third quarters, the corporate mentioned it will enhance spending on advertising and analysis and improvement because it adapts to those new realities and will allocate capital to mergers and acquisitions, in line with Luiga, whereas sustaining a “construct first technique.”
However general, Spotify, which has already taken a variety of cost-cutting measures, mentioned it will depend on better effectivity via AI. “We now not scale by rising headcount, we scale by rising the influence of the individuals we have already got,” one govt mentioned.
CFO Christian Luiga speaks on stage through the Spotify Investor Day 2026 morning presentation at Highline Studios on Might 21, 2026 in New York.