Spotify has reported impressive operating figures: the total number of users has reached 777 million, and the number of paid subscribers has surpassed the 300 million mark. However, investors were alarmed by the sharp increase in costs associated with the company's large-scale initiatives in the field of artificial intelligence. Spotify co-CEO Gustav Söderström took an offensive stance, saying that being a beneficiary of AI means winning on the side of cost optimization. The market reacted cautiously to these arguments, and at the end of the trading day, the service's shares fell by 8%.

One of the key products is the chatbot "Talk to Spotify", available to paid subscribers. It allows you to receive information about music, concert tours, and song meanings in a conversational format, surpassing, according to the management, conventional language models in its subject area. A more controversial initiative was a tool for creating AI remixes and covers based on real tracks. Spotify has already partnered with Universal Music Group, and Merlin, an aggregator of independent labels, has joined the partnership.

Cederstrom emphasized that Spotify's approach is fundamentally different from other AI music generators. The products are built around real performers and their real voices, not fictional characters. There are no specific launch dates for the tool yet: first, it will be released in the format of a research preview and will be available as a paid add-on to the main subscription. At the same time, the company is deliberately worsening the terms of the free tariff by increasing the number of ads and introducing new restrictions in order to encourage a massive user switch to Premium.