Spotify Unveils AI-Powered Personal Podcasts With Real-Time Q&A for Premium Users in U.S., Sweden, Ireland

Spotify used its 2026 Investor Day to position podcasting at the center of a broader push into AI-powered personalized media, unveiling “Personal Podcasts” built around AI-generated spoken-word audio tailored to individual listeners.

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Business Standard

Co-CEO Gustav Söderström said, “We started with access, moved to personalization, and now generation,” during the presentation, framing the shift as an evolution beyond recommendation-based streaming.

Korben

Spotify said more than 500 million users have now streamed a video podcast on the platform, up nearly 50% year-over-year, and it added that those users “engage more, use more devices, and spend more time across podcasts, music, and audiobooks.”

The company also announced a feature that lets listeners ask questions about podcasts while listening or watching and receive answers in real time without leaving the Spotify app, with launch for Premium mobile users in the U.S., Sweden and Ireland.

Spotify said the “Personal Podcasts” feature will let listeners create AI-generated briefings, explainers and recurring audio updates using prompts, PDFs, links and uploaded text, with personalized audio saved privately inside their Spotify libraries.

Spotify also unveiled “Studio by Spotify Labs,” a standalone desktop app designed to create personalized audio experiences tied to users’ daily lives, which Söderström said makes Spotify “the media player for the generative era.”

WION said Spotify’s new artificial intelligence-powered desktop application called Studio is released under Spotify Labs and allows users to generate customised podcasts and daily briefings by connecting personal data such as emails, calendars and notes.

TechCrunch

WION reported that the Studio app is currently in a research preview stage, is being rolled out in more than 20 markets, and is available only to selected users aged 18 and above.

In a separate development, Business Standard said Spotify announced “Studio by Spotify Labs”, a desktop app that can generate personalised private audio experiences, including custom briefings and podcasts based on users’ listening habits and interests.

TechCrunch described Spotify’s latest wave as “piling AI features into its app,” noting that the personal podcasts feature lets users generate AI-made podcasts about anything, including summaries of their calendars and emails.

As Spotify leans into AI-powered creation, TechCrunch said Spotify signed a deal with Universal Music Group (UMG) that allows fans to create AI covers and remixes of existing songs, while also partnering with ElevenLabs to release a tool that lets authors narrate audiobooks using AI voices.

“Spotify used its 2026 Investor Day to position podcasting at the center of its broader push into AI-powered personalized media, unveiling a wave of new creator tools, interactive listening features, subscription products and custom audio experiences that signal how aggressively the company plans to evolve beyond traditional podcast distribution”

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The Hollywood Reporter said Spotify executives laid out a pathway for hitting 1 billion active users by 2030 and $100 billion in annual revenue, with new features including the ability to create AI-generated personalized podcasts and user-generated covers and remixes using AI.

The Hollywood Reporter also reported that Spotify last reported 761 million global monthly active users, with 293 million of those as subscribers, and that annual revenue was about $18.5 billion in 2025.

Xataka reported that Morgan Stanley’s Audio Habits Survey, conducted by Alphawise, found that young people listen to AI-generated music for three hours a week, and it said those aged 18 to 29 are at 60% and three hours on average.

In a different angle on the same ecosystem, FourWeekMBA framed Spotify’s pivot as a business model shift from content distribution to content creation, arguing that Spotify “is fundamentally changing its business model from content distribution to content creation.”