Inside Spotify's Ambition To Become Your Most Preferred Audio Habit

Open eyes. Kill the phone alarm. Unsuccessfully stifle a yawn. Ask Alexa to play something on Spotify. Linger in bed for a song or two.

This has been my morning routine for pretty much the entire second half of 2020, as the work from home transition became more permanent, allowing me some liberties -- choosing a random song to wake up to, depending on how I felt that very instant, being one of them. And it¡¯s been fantastic!

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ALSO READ: Spotify's Secret Plan To Conquer India's Music Streaming Market Has A Healthy Dose Of Podcasts

¡°Your experience is something that most of the world has been experiencing in 2020,¡± explains Ziad Sultan. ¡°Music is a really fundamental part of the human experience, and this active act of seeking out music and immersing yourself in it, if anything, has brought us more comfort and richness in our lives during this year,¡± he says.

I¡¯m chatting with Ziad Sultan, Senior Director of Product Management at Spotify, who¡¯s helping me make sense of my newfound morning music-listening routine. He¡¯s the product lead for Spotify¡¯s personalization team, responsible for everything you see on the app¡¯s home screen, and then some.

Another trend Ziad highlights -- something that¡¯s accelerated greatly in the pandemic -- is as people spend more time than ever in front of their screens, they¡¯re craving quality screen-free time, perfectly playing into Spotify¡¯s strengths.

¡°Having the magic of music in your ear or the intimacy of podcasts, while being able to do other things in your life, from waking up to working out to cooking and running, it's something that people are actively seeking out,¡± according to Ziad.

Rewiring the brain

People are spoilt for choices when it comes to music streaming apps, podcasting destinations, and other ways to consume audio, but there¡¯s a reason why Spotify has over 320 million users and aims to become the audio habit of millions more. It¡¯s all down to Spotify¡¯s content and recommendations, claims Ziad Sultan.

¡°About 30% of the consumption on Spotify comes from editorial and algorithmic recommendation, so people do rely on us to discover amazing content but also reconnect with the familiar,¡± Ziad says, explaining how a lot of work goes into throwing up Discover Weekly and Daily Mixes within the app to help find the right music for each and every user. Sometimes that involves creating ¡°algotorials¡± to combine the best of both algorithmic and editorial tastes.

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Ziad explains them as ¡°some of these playlists basically take the human editorial curation and expertise and use algorithms to actually personalize them one step further, so the two work hand in hand.¡± But that¡¯s just the tip of the iceberg, of course -- the proverbial trailer to the hidden blockbuster.

Everyone knows Spotify spends a lot of time understanding how people listen to music and how to best fulfill that fundamental need. Intimately involved with product development, Ziad helps roll back the curtain to shine more light on that process.

¡°We conduct research and experiments across the product development funnel,¡± Ziad outlines. ¡°On one end, we try to understand how people think about music and consume audio, and on the other end we constantly run data-driven experiments to try to validate what we are thinking about the product as a whole.¡±

¡°Important disciplines we work with include engineering, product design and insights, where some really smart people help us do fundamental research about how people think about music,¡± explains Ziad. ¡°But we also have data scientists who help us run tests and experiments to understand what's working and what's not, and how people are responding to a particular stimulus.¡±

Before things become too nerdy and hard to follow, Ziad explains how these different branches of research and product development come together in one example where they try to probe what makes for a rewarding connection between listeners and artists on Spotify, and how people derive meaning from music in different ways.

¡°For some people, the meaning comes more from the sound and the song itself, but for others it comes more from the context,¡± Ziad explains, saying how a 14-year-old listening to a David Bowie song for the first time, with no context, might skip it after 10 seconds and not give it a second thought. But by giving some context about David Bowie, his story, the song¡¯s significance, the same teenager might actually derive a lot of meaning and connect with it to the extent of becoming a fan of David Bowie.

Engineering a habit

¡°These are the kinds of things we do fundamental research on, which helps inform our product roadmaps. Once we design a hypothesis, we put it out there, we measure its effects and learnings, and loop it back into our product development cycle,¡± Ziad explains. ¡°If we find out we were right, then we move forward and continue to incorporate features and elements that enhance the overall product. If the idea needs further tweaking or if it wasn¡¯t the right hypothesis, then we restart the cycle of experimentation and testing with a new line of thought.¡±

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Almost everything you see in the app has been AB tested somewhere within the Spotify user base before being rolled out as a final update, according to Ziad. The Spotify homepage is a product of this exact workflow, so is the search box within the app, the Daily Mixes, and Discover Weekly playlists, among other things. These are all examples of places that constantly have experiments running -- where you have a team within Spotify that will propose that if we make this modification, we will see this improvement. And then different parts of the Spotify user base see a combination of these experiments for validation and rollout.

When it comes to driving a particular user behaviour, Ziad makes an important point that probably runs deep through Spotify¡¯s core, hitting close to the mark on why people choose it overwhelmingly more than others for their daily audio fix.

¡°I don¡¯t think we¡¯re trying to steer users one way or another in making them act a certain way,¡± Ziad emphasizes. ¡°On the contrary, I look at it as a problem statement, that there are some real needs in people¡¯s lives that we¡¯re able to fulfill. And if we do that job right, users then incorporate us into their lives, making the relationship more habitual. So it's less about necessarily pushing something to the user and more about listening to what the users might want, while still innovating.¡±

As an example, Ziad points to mixed media experiences of combining music and podcasts into a single playlist that¡¯s recommended to users to see if it resonates widely. In fact, Spotify¡¯s 2020 Wrapped is currently running an experiment which suggests a podcast related to the artists in your top songs of the year. ¡°Most of the users didn't necessarily listen to podcasts in a habitual way, but when we found the right way to show them that option, they really appreciated it because they said this wasn¡¯t just a convenient way to see their top song of the year but also get to know more about their favourite artists through the suggested podcast alongside,¡± Ziad explains.

Features like collaborative playlists and group listening are similar attempts to offer Spotify users various levels of what¡¯s possible in terms of meaningful experiences they wouldn¡¯t find anywhere else. ¡°We know there isn¡¯t going to be a one size fits all answer that appeals to every single user,¡± Ziad concedes, ¡°but we aim to make them aware of what¡¯s possible in tailoring the experience that best fits their audio needs.¡±

Soundtracking your life

At this point, you¡¯d be forgiven to assume that Ziad Sultan is a one man army that pretty much runs Spotify all by himself, but in his own words he wouldn¡¯t be able to do what he does effectively without the help of his colleagues -- who in his humble opinion are some of the smartest minds in the industry. Madeleine Bennett is one of them. Both Ziad and Madeleine closely collaborate on defining the future of the playlist format, which in many ways is truly the atomic unit and cornerstone of Spotify. And since Madeleine is the Director, Head Of International Music Team at Spotify, she brings some interesting insights on what makes Spotify tick and why users keep coming back for more.

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¡°Spotify is a revolutionary company that really provides music fans around the world with new ways of listening and connecting with artists,¡± Madeleine explains. ¡°We are differentiating ourselves with unique playlists, by providing the best user experience for discovering music, with meaningful and authentic playlist brands like Radar and Pollen,¡± she emphasizes.

Yes, artists do have the choice to put their music on different music streaming platforms, but ¡°what¡¯s unique about Spotify is how we curate that music and present it to the user and how we consider our playlist brands as IPs, and for many users the playlist they listen to ultimately becomes a reflection of who they are and their taste in music, in many ways comparable to how people used to curate vinyl record collections back in the day,¡± Madeleine reaffirms.

Having spent a lot of time working with artists and music partnerships, Madeleine believes Spotify¡¯s hidden talent lies in finding emerging artists that are on the cusp of becoming musical sensations -- a fact that resonates widely across the user base.

¡°The amount of emphasis we put on emerging artists is a clear point of differentiation for us,¡± emphasizes Madeleine, ¡°it¡¯s not just about the superstars, users are interested in the 16-year-olds doing a cover version of a song in their bedroom or someone unknown who¡¯s just produced a new beat.¡±

For such musical talents, Spotify has an emerging artist program called Radar that is a key global initiative, explains Madeleine. ¡°It involves marketing new artists who have a strong potential, supporting those artists from the beginning of their journey and helping them get more reach globally, crossover into new markets and just really help drive their discovery that we hold so dear,¡± she says.

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In terms of setting cultural benchmarks, Madeleine speaks how music subcultures are no longer exceptions but powerful forces that manifest across Spotify¡¯s 92 global markets and over 320 million users.

¡°Literally, thousands of musical cultures are happening on Spotify, manifested by even more musical genres,¡± Madeleine explains, while plugging in everynoise.com -- a website that tracks the overwhelming diversity of genres available on Spotify. ¡°Increasingly, we find musical benchmarks being not so much about a genre or style but about a community of listeners that identify strongly with a playlist. Users that don¡¯t want to be defined by one genre, they want the opportunity to listen to rap, Bollywood, K-Pop, Latin, and more, we are seeing a lot more people who identify with kind of genre lists than specific genres of music,¡± she reveals.

Sticking to our larger theme of how Spotify¡¯s becoming a musical habit among audio listeners and creators, Madeleine points out how Spotify allows everybody to be a curator. ¡°Everybody can be a DJ, and that kind of exploration and discovery and sharing of music is a wonderful way to get people curious and get people listening,¡± she highlights.

Nowhere is this more strongly manifested than Spotify¡¯s ¡°Unexpected User Created Playlists¡± of 2020, spurred by the pandemic, of course. With people around the world spending more time indoors, listeners are creating playlists based on activities from gardening to homeschooling to painting to dying their hair. Spotify users in India have created playlists for Cleaning and Painting as well as Baking, Homeschooling, Gardening, and Haircuts! If this isn¡¯t habit-forming in motion, I don¡¯t know what else is.

Time for some masala chai

As Spotify¡¯s story unfolds into 2021 and beyond, constant innovation and experimentation will continue to set it apart, according to both Madeleine and Ziad.

Despite the lockdowns and pandemic, Madeleine says, ¡°Artists are adapting and virtual experiences are getting elevated. They are creatively coming up with ways to reach their fans with very little guidance from the industry. Artists producing virtual events, selling tickets to virtual events will continue even after the live side of the industry comes back, and Spotify is excited to figure out how we can participate in enabling some of these experiences.¡±

Ziad underscores Spotify¡¯s unique value creation down to ¡°putting consumers and creators on the same software stack for the first time ever, especially on the podcasting side of the business, which is going to allow Spotify and its users to try stuff that hasn¡¯t been done in delivering audio-as-a-service ever before.¡± Like creating shows that combine music and talk, which allows a creator to freely incorporate Spotify¡¯s over 60 million licensed tracks, that ultimately generates streaming revenue to the creator.

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When it comes to driving the future of audio, it will boil down to three essential things, feels Ziad. ¡°How do we recommend content to our users, how do we impact the creator¡¯s life, and how do we best localize our communication and conversations with Spotify consumers in their respective part of the world,¡± he concludes.

Nothing Else Matters by Ziad Sultan? ¡°Did you mean Nothing Else Matters by Metallica,¡± Alexa asks me. I grunt in agreement, listening to James Hetfield¡¯s iconic guitar notes, as the song begins. Fixing myself some hot masala chai, I have an epiphany. So close, no matter how far; Couldn't be much more from the heart; Forever trusting who we are; And nothing else matters -- kinda sounds like a perfect Spotify anthem, if you ask me.