Spotify catalogue hits 250 million tracks amid questions over AI, recommendation strategy

The figure was disclosed during the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call, marking a significant increase from the “over 100 million tracks” long cited in Spotify’s public-facing materials. The company’s media information page continues to highlight that figure, alongside claims of more than 700,000 audiobooks, 7 million podcast titles and 761 million users, including 293 million subscribers across 184 markets.

During the call, Spotify co-chief executive Gustav Söderström outlined the scale of catalogue growth since the company’s early years.

“When I joined [Spotify], I think the music catalog was about two million tracks,” Söderström said. “And now it’s something like 250 million tracks. So the growth of the catalog is not new; we think it’s going to keep increasing. And that means that the recommendation problem gets more important for consumers.”

The rapid expansion comes as streaming services face an influx of AI-generated material, with concerns that low-quality or automated uploads are contributing to catalogue “inflation”. The comments have prompted questions about whether the platform is deliberately maintaining a permissive upload environment to enhance its recommendation systems or to prepare for increased use of derivative works generated with artificial intelligence.

Söderström also suggested that Spotify sees an opportunity in enabling existing artists to participate in AI-assisted content creation, including derivatives of existing works.

“But where we think there is a unique opportunity is that right now, existing creators are largely left out of the AI opportunity altogether,” he said. “Many creators are using AI to make new music, but existing creators cannot join. That’s because the copyright problem is much more complicated to solve well. And the attribution problem of who should get paid what is much harder. But we love hard problems. So that’s the problem we want to go after.”

He added that Spotify aims to develop ways for established rights holders to engage with AI-generated derivatives of their intellectual property.

The scale of the catalogue expansion has also raised questions about transparency, particularly the discrepancy between the publicly stated figure of “over 100 million tracks” and the significantly higher internal total. The company has not publicly clarified the difference between these figures.

Analysts and observers have also raised broader concerns about the impact of such growth on discovery for emerging artists, particularly as recommendation algorithms play an increasingly central role in how users engage with music on streaming platforms.

Questions also remain over the proportion of Spotify’s catalogue that is AI-generated and the rate at which such content is being uploaded. The company did not respond immediately to requests for comment on its catalogue figures or the role of AI-generated material.