Spotify Newsletter #291

Your Weekly Dose of Spotify News

★ SPOTlight

⭐️ Spotify Adds Record Monthly Users and Hits 290 Million Paid Subscribers in Q4, New Co-CEO Says 2026 Will Be ‘Year of Raising Ambition’

Daniel Ek, in prepared remarks with the Q4 earnings announcement, said Spotify has effectively built “a technology platform for audio — and increasingly, for all the ways creators connect with audiences.” He said the company will “keep building the technology” for “the hard problems ahead,” citing major tech shifts like AI and wearables.

⭐️ Spotify says its best developers haven't written a line of code since December, thanks to AI

Has AI coding reached a tipping point? That seems to be the case for Spotify at least, which shared this week during its fourth-quarter earnings call that the best developers at the company “have not written a single line of code since December.” That statement, from Spotify co-CEO Gustav Söderström, came alongside other comments about how the company is using AI to accelerate development.

⭐️ Reading Was Never Meant to Sit Still

Owen Smith, Spotify’s VP of Audiobooks, on how Spotify is bringing physical books and audiobooks together so stories fit more naturally into everyday life, no matter how you read.

⭐️ Spotify is testing a bold new look for its Wear OS app

A redesigned “Now Playing” screen puts album art front and center, while introducing gesture controls for playback.

⭐️ Spotify CEO delivers strong message on its future

“Spotify enters this next chapter from a position of strength, aiming to build the first truly intelligent media platform,” wrote Morgan Stanley analyst Benjamin Swinburne in a research report shared with TheStreet. “We anticipate more product tied specifically to leveraging AI and enhancing personalization.”

⭐️ How We Release the Spotify App: A Look Under the Hood

In Part 1 of “How We Release the Spotify App”, we gave an overview of how the Spotify release process works. In Part 2, we will peek under the hood at the tooling that makes it possible. To understand where we are today, it’s useful to give some historical context of how the current solution came to be.

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🗣 Podcasts

• C4 launches original comedy channel on Spotify

• How Spotify Saw the Future of Podcasting Early

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▶️ Playlists

• 5 Ideas for Bringing the Music You Love Into Valentine’s Day

• What Spotify’s AI Playlists Really Change About Music Discovery

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🎧 Streams

• Bad Bunny's Spotify streams increase 470% in the US after Super Bowl performance

• Songs are reaching 1bn Spotify streams 14x faster than a decade ago, and other stats from Chartmetric’s 2025 Year in Music report

• Avicii's "Wake Me Up" Crosses 3 Billion Spotify Streams

• Classic Pop Albums of the Streaming Era

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🤖 AI

• Spotify eyes AI ‘derivatives’ as new revenue stream for artists – says its tech to let fans make remixes and covers is ready

• Spotify’s AI Pivot Signals A New Phase For Creator Discovery

• Spotify's Top Devs Haven't Coded Since December—AI Does It All

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🖌 Design

• How Spotify Designs Podcast Discovery at Scale

• Spotify Tests Minimalist Wear OS Now Playing Design

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💻 Tech

• From crossfade to lossless: 5 must-tweak Spotify settings most people miss

• Spotify Just Killed Thousands of Third-Party Music Apps, and Developers Reveal Which Ones Are Next

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📢 Marketing

• From a young Elvis impersonator to the king of Spotify: How Bruno Mars managed to appeal to (almost) everyone

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🎵 New Adventures

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Question? Advertising info? Please email Jeff. Have a great day!

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