How would you improve Spotify?

Question: Imagine you’re working on Spotify. What feature would you add to improve music discovery for new users? 1. Define Spotify is a music streaming app that allows users to personalize their music to suit their musical interests based on a shared community of listeners with similar preferences. 

 

 2.Clarify the Scope: I am a product manager for Spotify and am considering adding features to improve music discovery for new users. 

 

 3.Clarifying the Questions: 1. Is there an age range for the new users? 

 

4.For this exercise, let’s assume: 

• The feature targets users aged 18-35, as they represent a significant portion of Spotify’s audience and are more likely to engage with personalized, tech-forward features. 

• However, the solution should still appeal broadly, ensuring inclusivity for other age groups.

 

 5.Assumptions about Spotify: 

While I am not a Spotify user, I assume that there are features that currently exist, such as: 

 

1. Selecting genres of music (Rap, R&B, Jazz etc…) 

2. Typing in a specific artist by name that you want to hear (Alicia Keys, Stevie Wonder, Lil Wayne) 

3. Typing in a specific song that you want to hear (Why We Sing by Kirk Franklin or Every Little Step I Take – New Edition) 

4. Liking or disliking a particular song that plays (Like or dislike) 5. Skip songs 

6. Choose. language 

 

6.Choose a Goal:

 • To improve music discovery for new users? 

• Which increases the number of acquired new users 

 • Increase revenue by way of monetization of ad plays 

 

 

  Conversion rate to premium users 

 • Smooth Onboarding and retention of new users? 

• Improve the customer experience via effortless personalization 

 • Increase usage and engagement 

• Word-of-mouth referrals 

 • This leads to more new customer acquisitions 

 

 7. List User Groups and Define Them Users between the age of users aged 18-35: 

 1. Power Streamers – • Users who stream 3+ hours daily 

 • Actively create • curate multiple playlists 

 • naturally, seek new music 

• They are likely to be premium subscribers 

 2. Context Shifters 

• Users who have distinct listening patterns based on activity/location 

 • Create or follow situation-specific playlists (workout, focus, commute) 

 • Value seamless transitions between devices 

 • Typically use Spotify during structured parts of their day 

 

 3. Social Music Networkers (instead of "Community-based listeners") 

• Users who regularly share music with friends 

• Participate in collaborative playlists • Follow friends' listening activity 

• Share their listening activity on social media 

• Likely to use features like Group Sessions or blend playlists

 

 8.Selected User Group: Context Shifters I've chosen to focus on Context Shifters because I see a compelling opportunity here. Let me walk you through my thinking: When people are just getting started with Spotify, they're often exploring how music can fit into different parts of their day. These users are typically more open to discovering new music that matches what they're doing – whether they're grinding through work, hitting the gym, or unwinding on their commute home. Interestingly, there seems to be a gap in Spotify's current feature set around this type of contextual discovery. This represents an untapped opportunity we could explore. Here's what makes this group particularly valuable: once users start relying on Spotify throughout their day – for their morning workout playlist, focus-time at work, and commute mix – they're more likely to see the value in upgrading to Premium. The convenience of having perfectly curated music for every moment becomes really personalized. There's also a natural viral effect here. When someone finds the perfect workout playlist or discovers great focus music, they tend to share it with friends who have similar needs. This word-of-mouth sharing could help drive organic growth.

 

 9.List User Pain Points and Describe Them

 1. Activity-Mood Mismatch – Rank: 4 Inconvenience • Problem: Music doesn't match what you're doing • Example: Getting a high-energy dance track while trying to focus on work • Impact: Users waste time searching for the right music and lose focus when inappropriate songs play

 

 2. Location Music Discovery – Rank 5 major inconvenience • Problem: Building new playlists for each location is time-consuming • Example: Having to create an entirely new "work-appropriate" playlist • Impact: Users stick to the same playlists rather than finding better options for each location 

 

3. Mood-Artist Discovery – Rank difficult – 5 major inconvenience • Problem: Hard to find new artists that match your current mood • Example: Wanting fresh focus music but defaulting to the same familiar tracks • Impact: Users get stuck in music ruts when they need variety most 

 

4. Context Switching – Rank 4 Neutral • Problem: Jarring transitions between different activities • Example: Going from intense work focus to relaxation time • Impact: Disruptive music changes break users' flow and mood 

 

 10.Prioritize the Pain Points 

1. Activity-Mood Mismatch – Rank: 4 Inconvenience • Problem: Music doesn't match what you're doing

 • Example: Getting a high-energy dance track while trying to focus on work 

• Impact: Users waste time searching for the right music and lose focus when inappropriate songs play 

 

2. Location Music Discovery – Rank 5 major inconvenience 

 • Problem: Building new playlists for each location is time-consuming 

• Example: Having to create an entirely new "work-appropriate" playlist • Impact: Users stick to the same playlists rather than finding better options for each location 

 

3. Mood-Artist Discovery – Rank difficult – 5 major inconvenience 

• Problem: Hard to find new artists that match your current mood • Example: Wanting fresh focus music but defaulting to the same familiar tracks 

• Impact: Users get stuck in music ruts when they need variety most

 4. Context Switching – Rank 4 Neutral • Problem: 

Jarring transitions between different activities 

• Example: Going from intense work focus to relaxation time • Impact: Disruptive music changes break users' flow and mood

 

. List Potential Solutions:  The feature lets listeners choose music based on location, activity, and the desired mood.

 

 1. Location-Based Music Discovery 

• Feature: Automatic location recognition and music adaptation • Implementation: o Users can save preferred music styles for frequent locations (office, gym, home) 

o App learns patterns and suggests appropriate playlists o Quick-switch options between saved location preferences 

• Impact: Eliminates time spent searching for proper music in different settings 

 

2. Mood Selection Enhancement 

• Feature: Contextual mood-based filtering 

• Implementation: 

 o Simple mood selection interface for each location 

o Examples:  Office: Focus, Energizing, Background  Commute: Relaxing, Energizing, Wind-down o Smart transitions between mood states 

• Impact: Provides consistently appropriate music for each context and emotional need 

 

3. Activity-Based Matching • Feature: Activity recognition and playlist adaptation • Implementation: o Preset activity modes (work, exercise, relaxation) 

o Music energy levels that match activity intensity 

o Smooth transitions between activities 

• Impact: Reduces disruption and maintains user flow throughout daily activities 

 

 12. Define Success Metrics Success Metrics: • Completion Rate: The percentage of users who finish the onboarding process. This is crucial for overall user growth and engagement. 

 • Feature Adoption Rate: The percentage of users who regularly use a specific feature. This metric is important for understanding feature effectiveness and identifying areas for improvement. 

 

Success Metrics 

1. Song Discovery & Exploration 

• First-Time Plays: 

 o Number of unique songs a user plays for the first time 

o Rate of new song discovery (daily, weekly, monthly) 

o Discovery rates across different contexts (work, gym, commute) 

• Engagement Depth: 

o Average listening time for newly discovered songs 

o Completion rate for newly discovered songs

 o Skip rates on contextual recommendations 

 

2. User Action & Value 

• Playlist Addition Rate: 

 o Count of discovered songs saved to personal playlists 

o Playlist addition rate in specific contexts 

• User Growth & Behavior:

 o Growth in unique artists played per user 

o Sharing of discovered tracks 

 

Rationale for Grouping: • Song Discovery & Exploration: This group focuses on how effectively the product introduces users to new music and encourages them to explore the catalog. Metrics here measure the breadth of discovery and how deeply users engage with new songs. 

 

 • User Action & Value: This group focuses on how user actions demonstrate value and how the product drives desired behaviors. Metrics here measure the extent to which users actively incorporate new music into their listening habits and share their discoveries with others. 

 

 Business Goal Tie in: Business Goals & Corresponding Metrics: 

1. Increase User Engagement & Retention: 

• Metrics: o First-Time Plays: Higher numbers indicate successful introduction to new music, keeping users engaged. 

o Song Discovery Rate: A rising trend suggests the platform is effectively introducing new artists and tracks.

 o Engagement Depth: Longer listening times and lower skip rates signify users are enjoying and exploring the content.

 2. Drive Premium Subscriptions: 

• Metrics: o Playlist Addition Rate: Users who actively curate their music libraries are more likely to value the service and consider premium features. 

o Feature Adoption Rate: High adoption of premium-only features (e.g., ad-free listening, offline playback) directly translates to revenue. 

3. Enhance User Experience & Loyalty: 

• Metrics: o Contextual Recommendations: Lower skip rates and higher engagement on context-based recommendations indicate personalized experiences are resonating with users. 

o User Growth & Behavior: Growth in unique artists played and increased sharing of discoveries suggest a loyal user base actively participating in the platform's ecosystem. 

4. Expand Music Catalog & Artist Reach: 

 o Growth in Unique Artists Played: This metric reflects the platform's ability to expose users to a diverse range of artists, benefiting both users and the music industry. 

o Sharing of Discovered Tracks: Viral sharing of new music helps expand the reach of artists and introduces new listeners to the platform. Additional Considerations: • Completion Rate: A high completion rate for onboarding ensures users are effectively guided through the platform's features, increasing the likelihood of long-term engagement.

 • Feature Adoption Rate: Monitoring the adoption of new features provides insights into user behavior and helps prioritize future development efforts.

Describe the product so that you and interviewer are on the same page.

Spotify is a music app available globally on leading mobile devices, desktop, and browsers. Artists/Studios upload albums/songs and the users can stream the songs. The users can also create a private or public playlists, Follow Artists or other Users, and engage with songs/Album by liking, sharing etc. Recently, Spotify has been acquiring a lot of long form podcast content, with of those with Videos.

 

What's the goal of improvement?

1. User experience with the App?
2. Studio/Artist experience on the App?
3. Acquire more users?
4. Acquire more content?
5. Improve Revenue -- advertiser revenue?
6. Improve engagement of the app?

 

I believe the top metric for Spotify is the engagement i.e. number of mins of songs streamed per user per day. Users have other alternative such as sound cloud, Amazon Music, YouTube music, therefore, keeping the engagement of the users high on the platform is beneficial for our flywheel. More engagement means more users, which will bring more artists and studios. This will result in increase in streams, and therefore revenue.

 

What is the mission of Spotify?

Unlock the potential of Human Creativity.

 

What Value does Spotify bring to the world?

1. It enables users to stream high Quality music from top artists conveniently.
2. It helps Artists to reach millions of people.
3. It helps generate revenue for the artists and advertisers.

 

Structure:

1. Identify User Groups and pick the one with the highest impact
2. Discuss their Pinpoints with the product today
3. Brainstorm a few solutions.
4. Discuss the success criteria of improving the engagement (our top goal )

 

User Groups:

 

Artists:

1. Independent Artists (podcasters, musicians)
2. Artists that are working with Studios
3. Studios that own the Artists' music

 

Listeners: There are many ways to segment the listeners ( based on the usage, based on context, based on music type, etc.). Since we want to improve engagement, let's focus on specific segment based on the context they listen to music in.

Segment listeners based on the context:

1. Users listening to music at work
2. In the Gym
3. Listening as a group
4. Listening when they are going to sleep.
5. Music while relaxing
6. Music to get motivated ( a little pick me up)

 

Advertisers:

1. Big Brands
2. Small Businesses

 

I think the biggest impact will be if we focus on the segment in the gym because:

1. I believe a lot of people engage with the App in the Gym. The gym goes segment is very high in the metro city. And the current experience is not that great.
2. There a lot of competitors when a user is in this context (gym) such as youTube, Soundclod, Apple music, etc.

 

Customer Pain point:

 To narrow down the scope, lets focus on the pain point the a user in the gym doing a solo workout and not a group workout.

 

Customer Journey:

1. I go to the gym, and pop up spotify App on the phone
2. Think about whether I want to play a certain playlist ( created by me or by other user) or a individual song.
3. Spend some time thinking about it and play a song. Typically, I will play a recently liked song because it takes out decision making process of picking a song so that I can get to my work out.
4. I don't feel very pumped about the song maybe because I have listed it to many times recently.
5. Anyways, I keep listening to the song.
6. In the middle of my set, the song ended and the next song started playing. This song doesn't match my tempo and I stop my set to pick another song.
7. I loose momentum while picking the next song.
8. So, I just stick to the best song for my workout today, a song that will motivate me to perform at my peak.

 

Summary of pinpoints from customer Journey:

 

Solutions:

 

I want to focus on help users find the "Right Music that can help them to achieve the peak performance during a workout"

 

 

 

Success metrics:

1. Engagement (number of mins streamed ) of the users who listen to music during workouts. We can use GPS tracking to see if they are in the gym etc.

 

Secondary metrics:

1. % of the users tab on this feature
2. % of users listen to the sample songs
3. of the users who listened to the sample songs, what % of users started their session.
4. % of users who at least completed the half of the session.
5. Week Active Users of the feature.
6. % of WAU of Spotify that engaged with the feature
7. Weekly Retention - of users who utilized the feature last week, what % came back this week.

 

Describe the product

**Ask these clarifying questions before attempting to answer this Dropbox product improvement question:**

 

- Are there any specific constraints that you want me to take into account when thinking through this problem?

  - [Interviewer] No

- Can I think through this in freeform or is there a specific goal we are trying to achieve?

  - [Interviewer] I will let you decide the goal

 

**Strategic Analysis:**

 

1. Spotify's mission is to "Unlock the potential of human creativity – by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it."

2. The company is a three-sided marketplace with artists on one end, listeners (music, podcast) on the other end, and Spotify being the curator of the marketplace.

3. They employ a freemium model with an ad-based free tier, a premium subscription tier, and a family tier (premium for multiple people).

4. Spotify's competition includes Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music, which are big platforms with advantages around their own devices and large user bases they can access. This makes it very important for Spotify to carve a niche and differentiate themselves.

 

**Users:**

 

1. **Casual Listener**: This user is a casual listener, only uses the app occasionally, does not mind ads, and uses Spotify to listen to music and podcasts on a sporadic basis. Spotify would want to engage these users more to get them converted.

2. **Power User**: This user has a few playlists, is engaged and uses Spotify's social features, hates ads, and loves the fact that they can listen to music across various devices due to Spotify. They love the extensive library. Spotify would want to retain this user and, through them, acquire more customers through family subscriptions or referrals.

3. **Artist**: This user creates content for Spotify. They are budding artists who need exposure and are hoping Spotify can help them become rich and famous. These are the people who are the core component of Spotify's mission statement, and Spotify was originally built to help them.

 

**Of the above user groups, I think I will want to concentrate on improving the product for the Artist user group. Specifically, given any improvements in this section will:**

 

1. Bring more content/original content (if played right) to Spotify.

2. Attract more listeners (reduce Spotify's acquisition cost) if these budding artists could create world-class content (based on their talent and user preference data that Spotify has collected over the years), improve user engagement and conversion.

3. Further Spotify's mission to help budding artists live off their art and further differentiate Spotify from the likes of Apple Music, YouTube, etc.

 

**Given that, let's concentrate on these user pain points:**

 

**Pain Points:**

 

For an artist customer, some of the core pain points are:

 

1. They are good artists but lack the professional training and confidence they need to get to the next level.

2. They need other artists to make them whole (a songwriter needs singers, a band, a producer, and a studio to complete recording).

3. They lack basic resources (money, full-time jobs) and infrastructure (recording studios) to create professional products (music, podcast).

4. They lack the data and user feedback which they can use to create better content.

 

**Solutions:**

 

Given that, some of the unique things that Spotify can do to help these users are the following:

 

1. **A Curated Program for Budding Artists**: Spotify can experiment with creating some curated mentorship programs and provide tools to budding artists to create their first few songs. They can use this program to curate and judge artists for quality and potential (based on user data and user preference), provide them with the required training, resources, and professional help to create albums/podcasts that help talent go further. While doing this, Spotify can engage listeners and create user engagement. As an output, not only help raw talent but also create original content for Spotify.

2. **Online Community**: Spotify can create an online social network only for artists where artists can upload their creative works (under proper privacy and data protection) and find other people who can help make their art a professional product (a songwriter finding the right voice or a singer finding the right band). This portal can allow artists to request temp help for their music piece or provide work for artists that work on a single gig at a time. This mechanism will remove the hassle that an artist has to go through when finding other people in their band.

3. **Data Tools**: Spotify enjoys a unique position due to all the data it has on its users' music preferences, tastes, likes, and dislikes. It can provide this data to artists (new and established) to help them follow trends and create music that users like. The music created based on this data will also allow Spotify to further improve their recommendations to the existing user base and create higher engagement with listeners who want to enjoy the music they like.

 

**For the above, I will prioritize creating the "data tools" idea first as Spotify already must have this data arranged for its recommendation engine. I am thinking creating tools to expose the proper amount of aggregate data to its artists will be cheap (from an expertise standpoint) for Spotify and drive huge value instantly. It will also help existing artists and encourage budding artists. It can be incremental in nature and Spotify can drive value from day one. Next, I would focus on the curated program for budding artists and so on.**

 

**Trade-offs:**

 

1. Spotify needs to be extremely careful when sharing data on its listeners so that they do not compromise their privacy in any form.

2. While this idea will work, competitors are going to follow quickly and try to catch up. If the idea is selected, Spotify should make every attempt to capitalize on the first-mover advantage here and create something of value quickly.

3. Spotify will have to use the tool, creative deal-making (to attract established singers), and favorable terms (for a singer to create original content) to aid its strategy and differentiate themselves from the pack.

 

 

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