AI to spur more music creativity, not a threat, says Spotify CEO

Artificial intelligence will encourage more people to create music in the future and is not a threat to the industry, the founder and CEO of streaming giant Spotify said.

Artists using machine-learning tools to produce music have given rise to concerns about whether AI-generated music -- even entirely fake artists -- could one day replace human artists.

"I'm mostly optimistic and mostly very excited because we're just in the beginning of understanding this future of creativity that we're entering," Daniel Ek told reporters at an Open House at the company's Stockholm headquarters this week.

Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter and a recent book, "Mood Machine", have accused Spotify of tasking a handful of producers to make thousands of songs under fake AI profiles, which the company allegedly pushed onto playlists -- saving Spotify money by elbowing out real artists and their higher royalties.

Spotify has denied the claims.

"We want real humans to make it as artists and creators, but what is creativity in the future with AI? I don't know. What is music?" Ek said.

He recalled that electronic dance music and the DJ culture, and before that, hip hop where people sampled music, were initially not considered "real music".

Noting that Mozart had to compose entire symphonies in his head, Ek said that "now, any one of us can probably create a beat in five or 10 minutes".

"The tools that we now have in our availability are just staggering."

"Of course there are very scary potential applications for AI, but the more interesting thing for me is that the amount of creativity that creative people will have available at their fingertips is going to be insane," he said.

"The barriers for creation are becoming lower and lower. More and more people will create," he said.

Ek said he saw the development of AI in the music industry "much more as an evolution than a revolution".

Spotify had 678 million active users at the end of March, including 268 million paying subscribers.

Ek said the company, which turned its first annual profit in 2024, now had 100 million paying subscribers in Europe alone, and hoped to one day see a billion paying users worldwide.

"I don't think there's any doubt in my mind that the potential for Spotify at some point is to eventually get to over a billion paying subscribers."