Nine months ago, I made a prediction<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I wagered<\/a> that by the time the 2026 World Cup<\/strong> rolls around, fully AI-generated tracks could account for 50%<\/strong> of all music uploads to audio streaming services.<\/p>\n Eight days away from kick-off, I may yet be proven right.<\/p>\n In April, Deezer<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 the only major streaming platform that bothers to tell us when a track is machine-made \u2013 announced<\/a> that it was now ingesting nearly 75,000 fully AI tracks<\/strong> every single day. That\u2019s 44%<\/strong> of total daily uploads.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the bit of that announcement most of the subsequent commentary<\/strong> sailed past.<\/p>\n If 75,000 AI tracks are 44% of the daily intake, then Deezer\u2019s<\/strong> total<\/em> daily intake is currently running at roughly 170,000 tracks a day<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Importantly, the volume of human-made music<\/em> among this mass has stopped growing; Deezer\u2019s numbers imply that the number of tracks made by idiot fleshy hominids stood at ~90K<\/strong> in January 2025, and at ~95K<\/strong> in April 2026.<\/p>\n In other words, the AI flood<\/strong> hasn\u2019t displaced the endless tsunami of new human music. It\u2019s just been tipped on top of it.<\/strong><\/p>\n Deezer\u2019s<\/strong> total intake of daily music uploads has increased by some 70%<\/strong> in fifteen months \u2013 and virtually all of that increase is synthetic.<\/strong><\/p>\n Now\u2026 multiply that across every DSP on earth.<\/strong><\/p>\n Deezer\u2019s daily upload mix, Jan 2025\u2013Apr 2026. Source: Deezer filings \/ MBW.<\/em><\/p>\n All of this music has to live on servers<\/strong>. And servers cost money.<\/p>\n We can put a reasonably firm estimate on Spotify<\/a>\u2018s<\/strong> annual bill for those servers, because the company told us once \u2013 quietly, in the small print of its pre-float accounts.<\/p>\n Buried in SPOT\u2019s 2017 annual filing<\/a> was a disclosure that, just before its IPO, the streamer signed a service agreement with Google<\/a> for use of the Google Cloud Platform<\/strong>, with \u201ctotal minimum payments during the first three years of service [of] approximately EUR \u20ac366 million<\/strong>\u201c.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a floor of roughly \u20ac122 million<\/strong> per year \u2013 for cloud infrastructure alone \u2013 from 2018\u20132020.<\/p>\n Spotify<\/strong> has never published a headline cloud figure since. But its annual reports still flag the steadily rising cost of the \u201ccloud computing services\u201d<\/strong> tucked inside its IT spend.<\/p>\n Add up those yearly movements and Spotify\u2019s reported cloud and IT costs are running roughly EUR \u20ac183M (USD $200M)<\/strong> higher today than they were at IPO.<\/p>\n In FY2025<\/strong> alone, the firm disclosed that these costs rose by EUR \u20ac30 million<\/strong> \u201cdue primarily to an increase in our usage of cloud computing services.\u201d<\/p>\n The flood of AI content<\/strong> \u2013 music, but also AI video podcasts \u2013 now arriving on Spotify\u2019s servers will only inflate that cost as time moves on.<\/p>\n In the grand scheme of things, this expense is not hugely material for SPOT<\/strong> investors; after all, the firm posted USD $2.5B<\/strong> in annual operating profit<\/a> in 2025.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s a nine-figure annual sum that shareholders will surely be watching closely<\/strong> as it escalates.<\/p>\n Source: Annual Spotify 20-F filings. Note: Until FY2023, Spotify fully attributed these IT expense figures to \u201ccloud computing services and additional software license fees.\u201d Since FY2025, it\u2019s attributed them \u201cprimarily to our usage of cloud computing services.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Deezer<\/strong>, for its part, has long grumbled<\/a> about the expense of warehousing tracks that nobody plays. (Two years ago, it told investors, \u201cThere is a cost to having a never-ending growing catalog.\u201d)<\/p>\n Last month, cost-conscious Deezer did something about it \u2013 confirming<\/a> it has stopped storing hi-res versions<\/strong> of AI-generated tracks altogether.<\/p>\n This was something of a watershed moment: For the first time, a streaming service is now triaging which music is worth the disk space.<\/strong><\/p>\n Just how<\/strong> much<\/em><\/strong> music<\/strong> is sitting on said servers?<\/p>\n According to Luminate<\/a>\u2018s<\/strong> latest annual report<\/a>, global audio streaming platforms hosted over a quarter of a billion<\/strong> tracks at the close of 2025 \u2013 some 253 million<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I recently ran some additional sums on Luminate\u2019s numbers<\/strong>, and what fell out is startling.<\/p>\n Some 55.3 million<\/strong> tracks hosted by global audio streaming services were played zero times<\/strong> in 2025.<\/p>\n Not \u201ca few\u201d. Not once. Zero.<\/strong><\/p>\n Meanwhile, Luminate<\/strong> has confirmed that some 223.8 million<\/strong> of the 253 million<\/strong> \u2013 roughly 88%<\/strong> \u2013 were played fewer than 1,000 times apiece last year, across multiple platforms.<\/p>\n \u201cSome 55.3 million tracks hosted by global audio streaming services were played zero times in 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This was a graveyard<\/strong> before the robots even showed up.<\/p>\n Nine years ago I uploaded my own masterpiece, Pinky Hue<\/em>, to prove how easy it was to game streaming<\/a> \u2013 and discovered, to my lasting hurt, that no actual humans wanted to listen to it.<\/strong><\/p>\n Now picture 170,000 Pinky Hues<\/em> landing every day \u2013 over 62 million (!)<\/strong> tracks a year. More and more of them conjured by a machine\u2026 in the time it\u2019s taken you to read this sentence.<\/p>\n Welcome to the music biz, 2026 edition!<\/strong><\/p>\n Luminate\u2019s annual numbers imply that 55.3M tracks sat on global audio streaming services in 2025\u2026 without receiving a single play on any platform<\/em><\/p>\n You\u2019d think the largest music subscription streaming platform might be a little alarmed by all this. You\u2019d be wrong.<\/strong><\/p>\n On Spotify\u2019s April 28 earnings call, co-CEO Gustav S\u00f6derstr\u00f6m<\/strong> was asked about the generative AI music deluge \u2013 and reframed it, with some skill, as the opposite of a problem.<\/p>\n \u201cThe generative market for music is [accelerating the production of] new music, which is happening at scale and quickly increasing [Spotify\u2019s] catalog,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think that\u2019s good for a company that aggregates content<\/strong> because it makes the recommendation problem even more important.\u201d<\/p>\n Aka: The bigger the blob<\/strong> becomes, the more our users rely on us to navigate them through it.<\/p>\n S\u00f6derstr\u00f6m noted that when he joined Spotify in 2008, the DSP\u2019s catalog stood at about two million<\/strong> tracks; today, he confirmed, it\u2019s around 250 million<\/strong>.<\/p>\n This 125X growth<\/strong>, in his telling, isn\u2019t a threat \u2013 it\u2019s the very thing that makes Spotify\u2019s recommendation engine indispensable.<\/p>\n \u201cWith this [new tool], one song becomes 10,000 songs, 100,000 songs\u2026 the catalog is going to not just expand, but multiply.\u201d<\/p>\nA flood has a cost: and someone\u2019s footing the bill<\/h6>\n
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253 million tracks \u2013 and a graveyard<\/h6>\n
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Spotify isn\u2019t scared \u2013 it\u2019s delighted.<\/h6>\n
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