A major streaming platform’s latest AI feature is doing double duty as regulatory ammunition for Connoisseur Media CEO Jeff Warshaw, who is seeking to get radio’s ownership caps deregulated in the FCC’s 2022 Quadrennial Review proceeding.
Citing Spotify’s expansion of its AI-driven Prompted Playlist feature that now mixes podcasts and music in a single consumer-facing product, Warshaw presents evidence that digital audio platforms compete directly with broadcast radio and that local ownership rules should be repealed as a result.
His filing contends that listeners don’t experience different audio platforms as discrete services, and that Spotify’s collapsing music and talk into one product exposes the FCC’s 2018 Quadrennial Review, which treated broadcast and digital audio as separate competitive categories, as outdated. “Services like Spotify are no longer digital jukeboxes that simply substitute for owned music,” the filing states. “They are instead an integrated audio entertainment platform that competes with radio in providing music and talk just as does over-the-air radio.”
The filing also draws on Edison Research data showing that in 2025, the percentage of daily listening time Americans 13 and older spent with podcasts surpassed broadcast radio in the spoken-word category for the first time.
A decade ago, broadcast radio held 75% of daily spoken-word listening while podcasting held 10 percent. Warshaw cites the reversal as evidence that the listening habits underpinning the FCC’s existing ownership framework no longer reflect market reality.
The ask is direct: Warshaw urges the Commission to “move expeditiously to repeal these outdated ownership rules to allow local radio to scale to compete with the digital giants that are now direct rivals of broadcast radio for both listeners and advertisers.
