What metrics would you track to increase the content consumption of Spotify by ten times?

This is an interesting question. It could have been how will you increase the content consumption of Spotify by 10x and what would you measure to claim it? 

What is Spotify - Primarily a music streaming app with millions of songs. Added Podcasts and Shows in the recent past.

3 parts to Spotify:

1. Producers of content - Artists and production houses

2. Consumers of content - Paid and free users

3. Spotify Platform - powered by ML that helps recommendations/personalisation, offers SDKs, powers apps for both side of the controlled marketplace 

Business model - Ads for free consumers + Revenue from Subscribed consumers

Spotify pays artists between $0.003 - $0.005 per stream on average.

That works out as an approx revenue split of 70/30 - so that’s 70% to the artist/rights holdersand 30% to Spotify. 

Metrics to focus before working on 10x consumption increase problem:

Tracking metrics

- DAU (since it is a every day app) as well as MAU

- Frequnecy of consumption # of streams per day per user

- # of new uploads per day by type of content

- Engagement metrics that contribute (causal) for consumption such as - time spent on the app per user, (# of playlists, # of follow artists, # of downloads) per user level, how often consumers played the recommendations/login

North Star - Streaming time per user? 

To increase content consumption:

10x product consumption typically calls for strategic initiatives.

1- increase the # of consumers(either by going to a new geography or new segments)

2- increase the frequency of consumption for consumers

3- bring more content

4- serve new type of content

5- innovate on the business model(?)

6- work on engagement metrics

Which one to pick? 

1- New segments and (4) are interrelated. This looks like an interesting problem to solve

2- For Music/entertainment people have finite time. Can we look into underserved scenarios or the other entertainment areas where Spotify can play a role? 

3- I'm sure Spotify is doing its best with artists and production houses. Can we think of new content type to be onboarded? 

4- seems like a winner

5- might be complicated to analyse without knowing the economics

6- might be incremental improvement may or may not contribute to 10x improvements

 I would go with introducing new type of content

What type of new content to serve the Spotify users? 

I suppose Spotify caters to the age group between 20-40s, perhaps paid users are between 30s to 40s?

(I'm not focusing on segments based on frequency of usage, specific type of content etc.) 

If I were to zoom in on the audio needs of 30s to 40s not covered by Spotify

It could be 

- News(shorter engagement windows)

- Audio Books(longer engagement windows and could be sticky)

- Skill upgrade education materials (sort of Udemy content but certification issuance etc. will be overheads)

I would like to pick Audio books as it offers longer engagement content and there are set processes available today to launch audio books (publisher houses that are already familiar to Spotify)

From GTM perspective, I would look at the geographies where audio books are heavily popular and the publishers operating in that area to do initial testing

In the experiment, I would like to compare the metrics mentioned above(fr control group) to see how they improve in the treatment group(with Audio books)