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Spotify music discovery9/16/2023 ![]() In the physical world, some of these people are called DJs and they are huge celebrities. (Also, it is a interesting issue: music is the most personal form of expression, who wants playlists so impersonal?)Īt the same time, there are maybe millions of music enthusiasts with deep knowledge and an eagerness to share it, but they have a very limited place in the service and little incentive. The greatest music curator in the world might be working in a (very sleek) open office in Stockholm right now, but they latest playlist masterpiece is probably deeply buried among dozens of generic “mood-based” stuff. All playlists are anonymous and provide very little context outside the briefest description. The entire editorial team has a similar problem. (Spotify used to promote the figure of playlists head curators, such as Tuma Basa who created Rap Caviar. And there is always the tension that these playlists and their curators get more attention than the service, the Great Mediator. Not only they go against the promise of personalization, they cannot cater the demand for “catalog” (older) music, which is bigger than the demand for recent releases. An so on.Ī focus on mega popular playlists also has its limitations. Or quickly access and compare different recommendations. Or help create their own recommendation algorithms (more/less experimental etc.). Maybe the service/app could allow users to directly explore the full musical history or collection from others users. Music streaming apps are more than 10 years old and should be able to grow up and branch out.) People have been using and evolving with word processors and spreadsheets by over 40 years now. Beginners can create a Word, Excel or Powerpoint document, and then there is a tremendous depth of features and functions that advanced users can further learn. I keep thinking of Microsoft Office as a standard in this regard. (A bit of a detour: It is not hard to imagine that is possible to design a music app less shaped by constraints and still easy to use for a general population. The interface is not configurable and it is exhaustively streamlined for universal ease of use. Every interaction is mediated by a single, top-down interface. Or shape the creation of recommendations. ![]() The user cannot interact with the information directly. The main problem of trying of being a company (and service and app) that wants to “own” discovery and demand is that the company/service/app must permanently stand between the users and the real “thing” that makes the discovery possible, whatever the “thing” is. There is also a significant editorial team that creates, maintains and supervises a huge number of more specific playlists created by humans and the ever evolving algorithms.īut how good is this strategy for the users? ![]() Of course, to drive demand and discovery, Spotify also invests in some extremely popular major playlists (“Today’s Top Hits” has almost 31 million “followers” and “Rap Caviar” has over 14 million of them.). And the ‘machine learning’ about and around the music has long been a successful pursuit, starting from Spotify’s acquisition of the Echo Nest company. Spotify’s learning from its user base (hundreds of millions of people using the program every day) generates an enormous and rich database that was instrumental in creating the hugely popular “Discover Weekly”. (This episode of the podcast “Spotify: A Product History”, presented by Spotify’s Chief of R&D Gustav Söderström has an extremely interesting description of these initiatives.) shape their listening habits) are based on learning from its user base and analyzing the music, its metadata and the related information on the internet. ‘Owning’ music discovery and demand is a logical goal for Spotify as the world leading music streaming service: “ over time, you end up owning gross margin when you own discovery and demand generation” continues the quote on the original article.Īs I understand, the essential tools Spotify uses to successfully recommend music to many people and “create demand” (i.e. "When you own discovery, you own so much of the ecosystem you own demand generation" - Spotify CFO Paul Vogel in 2019, as quoted by DJ Booga on Twitter. ![]()
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