Annoyed with Spotify updates? Take a guess who’s guilty

Spotify is cramming synthetic intelligence options in its music streaming app whereas concurrently climbing subscription costs, however that’s not all. The corporate revealed this week in an earnings name that AI has been powering Spotify app improvement in latest months, as reported by TechCrunch. In a stunning admission, co-CEO Gustav Söderström mentioned that Spotify’s finest builders “haven’t written a single line of code since December.” Spotify describes its inner AI coding system as being able to “accelerating” improvement.

That system known as “Honk,” per the report, and it makes use of Claude Code for distant AI-powered improvement and deployment. In a single instance, Söderström defined Spotify engineers can use Slack to ask Claude Code to create a brand new characteristic or repair an issue affecting the app. Claude Code then completes the request and sends the up to date Spotify app model to the engineer’s telephone through Slack. From there, the Spotify engineer can merge the AI code with the manufacturing model of the app.

Spotify says this AI coding system is dashing up improvement “tremendously.” It’s solely the start for AI improvement at Spotify, in accordance with Söderström. The identical goes for user-facing AI instruments. The corporate teased the potential of Spotify constructing an LLM-like dataset with an abundance of music data.

“This can be a dataset that we’re constructing proper now that nobody else is basically constructing. It doesn’t exist at this scale,” Söderström mentioned on the decision. “And we see it enhancing each time we retrain our fashions.”

Spotify’s boastful description of its AI improvement workflows comes only one month after the corporate hiked subscription costs for US customers. It raised the price of the Spotify Premium Particular person to $12.99 per thirty days, making it one of the costly music streamers available on the market. On the time, Spotify mentioned the worth adjustments assist the corporate “hold delivering a fantastic expertise.” Besides by Spotify’s personal admission, Claude Code and AI-accelerated improvement have been driving the app’s expertise since December.

The Spotify app’s quickly increasing characteristic set, which is able to embody an in-app bookstore later this yr, could also be pushing prospects away from the platform. On the earnings name, Spotify famous that it rolled out over 50 options and tweaks to its app final yr. Customers annoyed with the app’s bloated really feel and AI options won’t be thrilled to listen to that synthetic intelligence is partly guilty for app improvement itself.

How do you are feeling about Spotify utilizing Claude Code because the driving pressure behind app adjustments? Tell us within the feedback under.