SPOT: If You Can't Beat 'em, Join 'em
Spotify reports earnings tomorrow -- and it's ramping up its music discovery strategy with the most powerful AI around. Check it out!
Megan Brantley
April 27, 2026
Spotify (SPOT) is on over 2000 devices.
Your car. Your speaker. Your watch. Your TV. Your gaming console.
Last Wednesday, it added one more. And this one is worth paying attention to.
Anthropic — the AI company behind Claude — just opened its platform to consumer brands.
If you haven't been tracking Claude, here's the short version: it overtook ChatGPT as the #1 app on the App Store in February.
Paid subscribers more than doubled this year.
Web traffic hit 288 million visits in February alone — up 31% in a single month.
Eight of the Fortune 10 are customers.
At the HumanX conference two weeks ago — the biggest AI industry event of the year — TechCrunch noted: "everyone was talking about Claude."
This is the platform consumer brands are racing to get inside right now.
Anthropic calls them connectors. Third-party services that plug directly into Claude so users can act through conversation instead of bouncing between apps. Order dinner through Instacart. Book a table on Resy. Find a hike on AllTrails. In one week, Anthropic added Uber Eats, Booking.com, TurboTax, StubHub, and over a dozen more. The directory now has 200+ partners.
Spotify was one of the first through the door.
The integration connects the two platforms at the seam. You talk to Claude — describe a mood, ask for a podcast for your commute, request high-energy tracks for the gym. Claude interprets the request. Spotify's recommendation engine tee up personalized music discovery on the spot.
Within days, Spotify was already the seventh most-popular connector on the entire platform.
And notably absent: it’s competitors. Apple Music isn't there. Apple launched its ChatGPT integration last fall alongside Spotify — but it hasn't joined Claude. Spotify moved first.
This is the pattern.
Smart speakers. Car dashboards. Gaming consoles. AI assistants. Every time consumer attention shifts to a new surface, Spotify is already there.
Our data says the strategy is working.
Spotify accounts for 73% of all consumer demand volume in music streaming over the past 90 days.
That's more than 6x Apple Music's 11%. Sirius XM sits at 8%. Pandora at 7%. There's no close second.
And the trend is going the right way. Spotify's web visits are up +11% YoY on a 90-day basis. Sirius XM is down -10%. Pandora down -17%. Apple Music is up +22% off a much smaller base — but Spotify is the only platform growing meaningfully at scale.
The chart below shows why Spotify continues to hold its spot on our Core Conviction list:
Our consumer demand data has steadily climbed while the stock has pulled back.
Spotify closed Friday ~34% below its peak.
That's the kind of demand-versus-price divergence we pay attention to.
The company has pricing power, too. Spotify raised US Premium pricing to $12.99 in early 2026.
Third US price hike since 2023.
Management said churn came in line with expectations. Margins are expanding. Free cash flow hit €2.9 billion last year — up from €2.3 billion the year before. The stock still trades well below highs.
Spotify reports Q1 tomorrow morning before the bell.
We like the setup.
📎 DON’T MISS: Our latest playbook just dropped on how to position around the AI infrastructure buildout. Complete with 4 trades, each reporting earnings this week. Huge!