case study about spotify

• Español – América Latina
• Português – Brasil

Spotify: The future of audio. Putting data to work, one listener at a time.

About Spotify

A Google Cloud customer since 2016, Spotify is the most popular global audio streaming subscription service with 248m users, including 113m subscribers, across 79 markets. Spotify is the largest driver of revenue to the music business today.

Spotify exemplifies the new era of scaling a business. It launched a music-streaming service in late 2008, surpassed 1 million customers in early 2011, and today offers 248 million monthly active users in 79 markets access to more than 50 million songs and podcasts.

That’s technology-driven hypergrowth by anyone’s standard. Equally striking, though, is the way Spotify has continued to innovate its offering, while adhering to the enduring principles for growing and sustaining a successful business: Pay attention to the customer. Find new ways to delight them. Use your comparative advantage, doubling down on the things you are best at, and find good partners to handle other work. Focus on scaling your culture even as you scale your technology.

Those old truths may be even more urgent in the digital age. Streaming audio is a competitive business, requiring fast product development, customer understanding, and powerful tools for things like recommendation, music discovery, and connecting people. Besides helping people find new music and podcasts, Spotify helps artists connect with fans and collaborate with each other.

Google Cloud is proud to support Spotify’s increasing diversification and success. In 2016 we worked together to move 1200 online services and data processing DAGs (directed acyclic graphs) as well as 20,000 daily job executions, affecting more than 100 Spotify teams, from Spotify’s data centers to the cloud. Today, Spotify’s customers listen to billions of daily plays of music and podcasts leveraging Google Cloud’s global network.

By employing automated, developer-friendly services on Google Cloud, Spotify’s teams could focus better on its core business, while gaining access to services, like data analytics, on which it could grow.

“Google Cloud removes a lot of the operational complexity from our ecosystem. That frees up time,” said Tyson Singer, vice president of technology and platform at Spotify. “We can iterate quicker on key needs, like data insights and machine learning. Having infrastructure managed for us, with the lower-value details taken away, streamlines our ability to concentrate on what’s important to our users and give them the experiences they know and love about Spotify.”

Spotify, not surprisingly, has a very engineering-driven culture, with almost half of its staff focused on building, launching, and maintaining its products. With major research and development offices in Boston, Gothenburg, London, New York, and Stockholm, the size of its workforce matches the global scale of its business. That requires a culture of collaboration and swift execution. In the fourth quarter of 2019, Spotify reported 271 million monthly users and 124 million Premium subscribers, a record, continuing its history of global growth.

Effective data use that preserves customer privacy even as the services scale is another core part of the process. Some of that increase is from a growing user base, but even more is from effective understanding of the customer experience on Spotify. The engineering brilliance that matches data-driven insights with improved customer experiences is increasingly easier and faster on the cloud.

Robust building blocks that exist on top of core data storage, computing, and network services help take away much of the backend hassle on the way to new product creation. Spotify’s technology leaders point to the particular importance of BigQuery, the Google Cloud data analysis tool, as well as Pub/Sub, for faster software application development. Dataflow, for real-time and historical data analysis, has also been particularly useful.

Much of that data goes towards solving the tricky issue of personalization in new ways. Data privacy is at the core of Spotify’s development activities as it seeks to offer music lovers new ways to find the sounds they love and connect with artists. Podcasting, a recent groundbreaking effort, relies even more on robust discovery to discern things like topics, creators, and user interest levels.

For artists, the ability to find and connect with fans, or work on new material with other musicians, is another dimension of data-driven discovery. Artists on Spotify have access to dashboards that let them gain knowledge about their fans and other artists, which helps them make better-informed decisions about everything from where to plan their upcoming tour to when to drop their next release.

Ultimately, it is great user experiences that powers a business. In the past year alone, the number of Spotify’s premium subscribers has grown by 29 percent . The company credits growth in new markets, as well as innovative new products, for the increase.

Underlying Spotify's growth is its commitment to experimentation and innovation. Being able to go faster and to more efficiently test a wide spectrum of new features and ideas means Spotify will be able to focus its DNA of creativity and excellence on even more innovative experiences for its happy listeners.

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The Soundtrack to Growth: A Spotify Marketing Case Study

• Growth Marketing

At Spotify’s 2023 “Stream On” event, CEO Daniel Ek announced that the platform had just passed half a billion monthly listeners across 184 countries and markets . Looking ahead, Ek aims to grow Spotify to 1 billion users by 2030; an ambitious — but not unwarranted — goal, considering the immense growth and success that Spotify has achieved over the past few years. 

From viral organic marketing strategies to bold moves in the metaverse space, here’s an in-depth analysis of everything Spotify did to become the world’s most popular audio streaming service today. 

What Is Spotify’s Marketing Strategy? 

Spotify’s marketing strategy is centered around the three main principles of personalization, emotion, and data. Everything that Spotify does begins with considering the end user; whether it be through personalized playlists or user data-driven campaigns, they are a brand that truly knows how to focus on making sure their audience receives the most positive experience possible. With that, let’s break it down.

Personalization

Spotiy has always been at the forefront of personalization — they even have a dedicated role of a VP of Personalization . Through machine learning, Spotify leverages users’ listening habits and historical behaviors to inform the types of albums and playlists that are shown on a users’ home screen. Reinforcement Learning, or RL, is then used to predict what a user might want to listen to in the future, so as to maximize the ultimate, long-term reward that users get from the platform. Recently, Spotify launched a new AI DJ feature that offers a curated selection of music with spoken commentary about the tracks and artists. This new AI feature marks a shift wherein Spotify turns into more of a lean-back, passive listening experience that’s based more on the platform’s recommendations rather than intentional user selection. Spotify is using a Reinforced Learning with Human Feedback model where users are basically teaching the AI to become better at their job every time they play or skip a song — hence creating the perfect foundation for continual personalization and improved recommendations. 

Spotify is a tech platform that really understands the value of tapping into human emotion to build user engagement and loyalty. Emotion can be an incredibly powerful marketing tool — particularly when it comes to music. Spotify really leans into the relationship between music and emotion, and builds their strategy around what music means to people. For example, many people associate music with the idea of memory and nostalgia, so this year Spotify created a “Playlist in a Bottle”, which lets users create a musical time capsule that will be unlocked in January of 2024. Since users have to wait until 2024 to “unlock” their playlist, this nostalgia-steeped feature essentially locks  a user into their Spotify subscription for another year, and provides an opportunity for organic UGC and social sharing when the time eventually comes around. 

Music is also often seen as a space for connection and love, which is why they created the “Spotify Blend” feature — a daily-updated playlist that combines the music you and another person listens to based on your shared listening activity. For Valentine’s Day, Spotify took this a step further and allowed users to view their personalized taste match score and compare their music tastes to a partner or significant other. It’s a sweet sentiment that is extremely fitting given the inherently emotional nature of music, but it’s also a genius way for Spotify to spur greater engagement and viral sharing. 

Spotify has access to huge amounts of listener data — so why wouldn’t they use it to their advantage? One of Spotify’s most well-known campaigns was all about data, yet it somehow still felt incredibly human and relatable. What Spotify did was they pulled user insights from large amounts of data, and framed those findings in a way that still feels deeply human. The result was a campaign that combined humor with leveraging user data, making users feel like they’re a part of a larger community of listeners. 

Who Is The Target Audience of Spotify?

Spotify’s target audience skews towards the younger Gen Z and Millennial generations, with a slight female majority and a geographical focus on the United States, Europe, and Latin America. That being said, Spotify’s audience is still incredibly diverse, with users in over 184 different countries and markets. This diversity calls back to the importance of user personalization, so that Spotify can create a customized experience for each user that is specific to their listening habits and music preferences. 

What Are The 4 P’s of Marketing For Spotify?

Now that you understand the main pillars of Spotify’s marketing strategy, here are the 4 P’s of Spotify’s marketing. 

Product: A look into a Spotify’s vertical scroll discovery 

One of the biggest features Spotify announced at their 2023 Stream On event was a new mobile interface built for deeper discovery. Much like TikTok or Instagram, there’s a vertical scroll that allows users to explore new album covers, short canvas clips or recommended podcasts. This fundamental change in the product interface reflects an overall shift towards a more discovery-focused model, where users not only listen to music they like but also find new songs and albums that are similar to their listening tastes.

One thing is clear: Spotify is no longer just a music streaming platform. With this new interface, Spotify is borrowing elements from TikTok, Instagram and Youtube, thus turning Spotify into a holistic experience encompassing not only audio, but also short-form video, album art, and more. 

It’s important to note that this more discovery-based approach may be Spotify’s attempt at solving the issue that they’ve been having with podcasts recently. Spotify acquired podcast production house Gimlet Media in 2019 for a reported $230 million, and purchased The Ringer network in 2020; all in all, Spotify spent over $1 billion as an investment into the podcast category. Despite the ambitious investment, Spotify’s podcasts are not yet profitable, and the platform only brought in roughly $215 million in revenue through podcasts in 2021. The benefit of the vertical scroll discovery format is that it gives users a new avenue to discover new content, and empowers creators to share and promote their content within the platform. Will this discovery model solve Spotify’s podcast problem? Only time will tell — but it was definitely a strategic move on their part. 

Price: The freemium model in action

Spotify’s pricing strategy uses a freemium model that offers a basic service for free and an unlimited, ad-free premium service for a subscription fee of $9.99 a month. The advantage of this freemium business model is that Spotify can attract and acquire a large number of users through the appeal of a free service, and then convert those users to paying subscribers once they have already established a positive relationship with the customer. Evidently, the freemium model has been working for Spotify, as they have a 46% conversion rate to paid services, compared to just 30% for Slack, 4% for Evernote, and 0.5% for Google Drive. 

The challenge with a freemium model comes later at the retention stage, as Spotify would have to continually retain their paying customers to maintain their stream of subscription revenue. Spotify has maintained an 85% retention rate , even despite their immense new user growth, demonstrating their strength in not only acquiring new users but also keeping them. At the heart of Spotify’s retention strategy is their ability to capitalize on the social and network effect on listening behaviors. Once a user subscribes to Spotify, they become part of a larger network of Spotify users, and they feel connected to that community through following a friend’s playlist, making blended playlists, or comparing their Spotify wrapped top artists. Once Spotify is able to give a user a sense of belonging, they are more likely to continue paying for the platform in order to continue to engage with others through the platform’s social sharing features. 

Promotion: The art of engineered virality 

Since its launch in 2016, Spotify’s viral “Spotify Wrapped” marketing campaign has dominated online conversations and social media platforms come every December. The campaign was so popular that it became some sort of an annual tradition or a rite-of-passage for die-hard Spotify users. In addition to being widely shared on social media, Spotify Wrapped is also the subject of countless memes, satirizations and copycat recreations. It went from marketing campaign to viral social phenomenon, and quickly rose to its status as the prime example of engineered virality and the power of social media trends.

On the surface level, Spotify Wrapped was created with the goal of giving users an opportunity to better understand their music tastes, and celebrate a year of listening by looking back at their favorite songs, artists and genres; but that’s only the beginning of it. Spotify Wrapped was created with the behaviors of social sharing in mind. Spotify recognized that music is by nature something that people like to share and show off, so they took that natural instinct and turned it into a tool for engineered virality and rapid word of mouth. Every part of the Spotify Wrapped function was designed and optimized for social sharing: 9:16 image dimensions were ready for Instagram Story posts, colors were designed to be eye-catching and attention-grabbing, and “share” buttons were scattered throughout the entire experience. Every time a user shared their Spotify Wrapped on their story, they were directly contributing to the viral loop of social sharing by reminding their own follower network to do the same. 

Genius? Yes. Organic, cost-effective, and sustainable? Yes, yes, and also yes.  

Place: Expanding into the metaverse 

In May of 2022, Spotify expanded their product into the metaverse with the launch of “Spotify Island”, a “paradise of sound” where fans and artists from all over the world can connect and explore a digital world of sounds, quests, and exclusive merch. Spotify is the first music-streaming brand to have a presence on Roblox, marking a significant change in the way we think about how we think about “place” when it comes to music streaming platforms. 

In terms of place, Spotify exists across any device that can access the app — be it a smartphone, laptop, smart speaker or voice-activated home assistant. With their expansion into the metaverse, Spotify pushes the boundaries of physical and digital spaces by creating a virtual universe to foster greater community and brand awareness. With Spotify island, the music streaming platform is no longer limited to its app itself; rather, it becomes a recognizable brand that transcends its functional manifestation. Spotify Island is designed to be incredibly true to its brand, with lots of green, music easter eggs, and shapes and icons that users will recognize from the app’s interface. 

On Spotify Island, users can mingle with artists, complete interactive quests, and unlock exclusive content. By creating a space where artists and listeners can interact with each other and with the brand in a whole new way, Spotify is able to immerse users in the world of their holistic brand identity, no matter how and where they choose to listen to their music. 

How Does Spotify Market Through Social Media?

In addition to Spotify’s now-viral Spotify Wrapped campaign, the tech company is skilled in marketing their platform through social media in a variety of different ways. At the core of their social media strategy is the principle that music can and should be a cross-platform experience, one that is not limited to the confines of the Spotify app itself; we already see this happening in their expansion into the metaverse, but this is apparent in their approach to social media as well. Every single experience and touchpoint on the Spotify app is designed to be easily shared across a variety of social media platforms, a move which is just as strategic as it is convenient. According to Spotify’s internal research data, 42% of Gen Z Spotify users in the U.S. said they’ve heard a song on social media and then searched for it on Spotify. While previous generations of music listeners may have been flipping through CDs at the malls or searching for vinyls at their local record store, today’s modern music listeners are seeking out new tracks and artists through social media. Evidence of this avid behavior of music discovery through social media proves particular importance for Spotify to hone in on their cross-platform experience and enable seamless discovery of their music. 

Spotify is not only marketing through social media, they are also evolving their product to replace behaviors that used to primarily exist on social media. In other words, much like social platforms like TikTok or Instagram, Spotify is broadening its offerings to become a space for eCommerce, music news, and information search in addition to music streaming. In their recent partnership with Shopify , artists can now sell their merch and/or concert tickets directly through the Spotify app. This “retail-ification” of the music streaming app is a win-win for both artists and Spotify, as it gives artists a platform to promote their work in the app itself, and it likely increases the amount of time that Spotify users spend on the app. Hence, in a strange chicken-or-the-egg type of situation, Spotify is simultaneously promoting itself through social media, and evolving to become a social media platform in itself to become less reliant on social media platforms in the future. 

What’s Next for Spotify?

There’s no denying that Spotify has been widely successful in their marketing strategy these past years — and they have the numbers to prove it. As of Q4 of 2022, Spotify has 489 million monthly active users . Still, listening habits and user behavior is a rapidly and continuously changing landscape, and in order for Spotify to retain its existing user base and maintain its success, the platform must also evolve to fulfill the diverse needs of today’s modern consumer. 

Will Spotify’s new vertical scroll discovery approach solve their podcast problem? Will Spotify Wrapped continue to go viral year after year? Will their social media strategy change in response to all the changes being implemented across Meta and Twitter? Spotify has many challenges ahead of themselves, but if their history of strategic thinking shows anything, it’s that this is a company that truly knows how to push the boundaries of growth and innovation. 

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Spotify: Face the Music (Update 2021)

By: Govert Vroom, Isaac Sastre Boquet, Abhishek Deshmane

By 2021, streaming had become "the" way to consume music, revitalizing an industry that was seeing double digit growth rates for the first time since the 1990s. And with its 155 million paid…

• Length: 31 page(s)
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2021
• Discipline: Strategy
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By 2021, streaming had become "the" way to consume music, revitalizing an industry that was seeing double digit growth rates for the first time since the 1990s. And with its 155 million paid subscribers and 355 million total users, Spotify was undisputedly the most popular music streaming service in the world - for the year of 2020, it posted record revenues of 7.88 billion. Yet, despite those numbers, in all its history, Spotify had never been able to post a yearly profit. The company had an operating loss of $293 million in 2020 (with a $581 million net loss) and was projecting an operating loss of $150 - $250 million for 2021. The case goes back to review the crash of the music industry in the 2000s, when digital formats and P2P services like Napster marked the heyday of music piracy. The case details the response of the music industry to digital formats - first a hostile one and then a slow embrace as the first successful business models were developed: digital downloads first, led by Apple iTunes, and streaming later, heralded by Spotify. The case then presents the history of Spotify, its business model, and financials, before analyzing its competition. Apple Music had already gained 72 million subscribers since its launch in 2017, while Amazon Music Unlimited had reached 55 million. Both were trying to catch up with - and even surpass - Spotify with new features, exclusives, and integration with their respective ecosystems of apps, services, and devices. The case concludes presenting the Spotify's ""audio strategy"", which saw the company spend nearly $1 billion in podcasting companies and technologies. CEO Daniel Ek believed this content would be the future of Spotify, but some analysts were not as confident. Was the audio strategy the right plan? Did Spotify have a path to profitability?

Oct 1, 2021 (Revised: Oct 3, 2021)

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Broadcasting and streaming media industry, Goods, trade, and consumer services, Music industry

IES869-PDF-ENG

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A UX/UI Case Study on Spotify

• September 29, 2020

For this case study, I will be focusing on the modern music streaming platform — Spotify.

This case study was completed as an independent project during a four day sprint while I was a student at Ironhack. I was challenged to create a new feature to an already existing and highly adopted app, so I chose to work on one of my favorite apps for streaming music, Spotify!

Music streaming has changed  so much  over the past few years in response to the digital revolution. What seems to feel like a lifetime ago, people were using MP3, Napster, iPods and even resorting to not so legal ways to download and listen to music. And before that, there were CDs, cassettes and vinyls. Although the idea of having a record player at home and lining up outside the store to buy the latest music drops seems charming and entertaining, I couldn’t imagine not having music at finger tips — available whenever and wherever I want it! The evolution of music streaming in itself is a topic I could talk about for hours, but for this case study, I will be focusing on the modern music streaming platform —  Spotify .

This week’s design challenge at  Ironhack  was to  incorporate a new feature  for an existing and highly adopted app. I chose Spotify because it completely changed the streaming industry in 2008 by setting the trend for subscription based music streaming services. It has also been my music streaming platform of choice for years now.

During this  four day sprint,  we focused more on  visual design  and  Atomic Design Principals  and developed our ideas to hi-fidelity prototypes. I was both excited and nervous about this weeks project since it was my first solo design project, but I am  big  on challenging myself, so I felt that it was the perfect time to tackle my own project.

So, let’s get started!

Just to give you a bit of background, Spotify is a music streaming platform — the biggest in the world by number of subscriptions. It was founded in Sweden by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, and eventually launched in 2008. As of March 2020, they have  248 million monthly active users , compared to Apple Music that has about 68 million users. Spotify uses a freemium model that offers users a free tier that includes ads, and a premium subscription for a monthly payment.

“Our 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.” — Spotify Mission Statement

Lean UX Canvas

Using the Lean UX Canvas, I outlined the current state of Spotify and wrote down my assumptions that I began within boxes 1–4. Since this is a living document, I revisited it to make updates as I went through the Design Thinking Process.

Competitive Feature Analysis

I started off my research with an analysis of Spotify’s direct competitors — Apple Music, Youtube, Soundcloud, and Google Play. I compared their features in the snapshot below.

Competitive Positioning Chart

I mapped out the competitors’ positions in relation to the axes to better visualize areas of opportunity and the competition. I decided to compare them based on the level of social interactions that they facilitate and the level of personalization that each platform allows for their users.

Spotify’s app can be personalized for premium users but is more so for private use. The “Blue Ocean” is an opening in the current market without many competitors which symbolizes an area of opportunity that I believe Spotify can enter with an additional feature. Although I had originally wanted Spotify to move towards a social adaptation, I decided to pivot later on in the process to create a more advanced personalization feature after getting some user insight.

User Research

I started off my user research with a survey of 12 questions. Surveys have been a really valuable tool for gathering a large amount of quantitative data, so I took some time to craft my questions to reflect the information I really needed at the beginning of my process.

I posted my survey in a Slack channel and a few Reddit pages related to music and received about  65 responses in 24 hours.

Here are some important statistics relevant to my project:

• About 60% of respondents said they use Spotify
• 90% said they listen to music for both pleasure and when doing other things (driving, working)
• Only about 1/3 of people like the personalized playlists that their platform creates for them

The last bullet point validated the need for a better-personalized playlist feature , so I decided to run with it and dive into some more user research to see where I can add value!

I conducted 5 interviews with people who use Spotify and/or Apple Music. I got A LOT of valuable insights from my interviews. One of the most surprising pieces of information that I found was the fluid nature of my interviewee’s streaming service choices depending on their needs. Their preferences constantly shifted based on the music experience they were looking for, attributing each platform its own function and purpose.

For example, users brought up the variety and diversity of music that Youtube and Soundcloud offered. When asked about finding new music, 4/5 people said they find more new music either through Youtube or Soundcloud.

“If I was able to find new music easily on Spotify, I wouldn’t be using Soundcloud or Youtube.”

However, I had to keep in mind that these platforms have an advantage for music discovery because some music is exclusively on Youtube or Soundcloud.

I converted all of my recorded interviews and survey results into digital sticky notes using  Miro . This week I discovered a new tool in Miro that made data synthesis so much faster! In the sticky notes feature on the sidebar, there’s a “ Bulk Mode ” button that allows you to type several sticky notes at once instead of doing them one by one. This cut my synthesis time down by so much! (Credit to our TA, Kathryn)

Affinity Map

After dropping all of my data onto sticky notes, I organized them onto my Affinity Map with themes and color-coded them by streaming service . I found that several of the insights were very much interrelated with one another, so connections between ideas are indicated with arrows .

The most prominent themes are:

• Finding new music

Many of the smaller headers are sub-themes that branch off of the two bigger themes.

Some key findings:

• Most of the data points were related to finding new music and playlists
• People find a lot of new music on Youtube
• Playlists are defined by their “vibe”
• The word “vibe” came up a lot in the interviews — this will be an important term that I will revisit later in my case study
• Songs on a playlist should have a similar sound and consistent genre variation
• People value finding new music/artists that are aligned with their preferences

Customer Profile

Stratagyzer’s Value Proposition Canvas  is another great tool for identifying customers’ jobs (things they need to get done), pains, and gains. This tool helps us better understand the customer we are creating value for. The customer profile connects directly to the second part of the canvas — the value map, which describes the elements of the value proposition.

Customer jobs can be  functional, social and emotional . Most of the customer jobs above are either emotional or social, which indicates that several gains and pains also fall into that category.

Task Analysis

The task analysis is a visual used to map out the path that users take to create a playlist. Although there are several different ways to create a playlist on Spotify, I used my interview data to choose the steps that users would usually take.

User Journey Map

A user journey map is useful for getting a more complete view of the user’s experience for a specific task. The goal is to find the significant low points or problems that the user is facing. It’s also a great time to highlight the thoughts and emotional aspects of the user’s experience.

The user’s journey is centered around creating a new playlist for an upcoming activity (like a road trip). First, the user may think about a future activity, which will motivate them to create a playlist to make it more enjoyable. The user experiences low points when:

• Thinking about suitable songs to start the playlist
• Looking through their library to find songs to add to the playlist
• Listening to the songs recommended by the Spotify Algorithm
• Trying to find similar songs to the ones they already have on their playlist

After identifying these four pain points, I quickly wrote down some opportunities and ideas to use during ideation.

I synthesized the pain points into a  problem statement.

Problem Statement

Then, I converted the problem statement into four  “How Might We”  statements:

• HMW make sorting through the personal library easier and more specific to users preferences
• HMW make newly recommended songs align more with users taste and requirements for the  vibe
• HMW help users curate songs with a similar sound to make creating a playlist easier

This is just another way to frame the problem by turning them into questions to better prepare myself for ideation!

Ideation is one of my favorite parts of the process!

Collaborating with my classmates  Sebastian Benitez ,  Christina Rice  and  Dave Ostergren  for a brainstorming session was awesome! We came up with about  80+ ideas in 15 minutes  using the  time-boxing  method to really push us forward.

Here’s what our brainstorming session looked like:

 After brainstorming some ideas for each HMW statement, I reshaped the best ideas into stars and diamonds then made  three umbrella headers  that the ideas are categorized into —  A sorting/filter feature, a “vibe” feature and a playlist creating helper.

Organizing all of the the contents and ideas from the brainstorming session was a vital step before moving on to prioritizing the ideas since there were so many to consider and analyze. I really enjoyed this part of the process because it allowed me to arrange the detailed ideas under three overarching ideas and set myself up for prioritization.

MoSCow Method

I further categorized the ideas from brainstorming into the MoSCoW Method chart pictured below to  prioritize  the features into Must Haves, Should Haves, Could, Haves, and Won’t Haves.

The must haves are the  mandatory features  that   are key to solving the users problems. These include the  three umbrella solutions and their corresponding ideas.

After prioritizing the features, I was able to define the products necessary to make my idea work, in addition to the gain creators and pain relievers on my Value Proposition Canvas.

The products and services on the left of the canvas are color coded to correspond with the gain creators and pain relievers on the right.

Just to recap, the pain points are :

Although the sprint was short and my workload for the week was high, I still wanted to incorporate a solution that solved both problems related to creating a playlist AND finding new music.

My Minimum Viable Product includes a solution to address both pain points (creating a playlist and finding new music).

Job-To-Be-Done

When Spotify users want to make a playlist for a future activity (I used an upcoming road trip for this scenario), they will “hire” Spotify to create a desired “vibe,” curate songs in their library (already saved songs), and be exposed to similar songs — the perfect opportunity to suggest new songs for the playlist based on user specifications like specific genres, artists and tags .

At the end of the day, the goal is to make whatever experience that the user is creating the playlist for to be more enjoyable. So my job is to help them fulfill their vision so that they are excited about hearing it in the future, and hopefully listening to it several more times.

Next, I created the user flow based on this job-to-be-done to create a visual representation of the path that the user will take to create a playlist with the new feature. The user flow also includes instances of human interaction (taps) and places where onboarding is necessary.

 PROTOTYPING

I created a low-fi prototype for the process of creating a playlist, incorporating the new filter feature.

Low-Fidelity Prototype

After conducting usability testing using  Maze , the heat maps indicated that many miss-clicks occurred where there were no clear guidelines for each step and also when people followed their natural tendencies. Seeing where people tapped enabled me to  design the feature so that it would fit into their mental models  instead of trying to go against it.

For example, many people clicked  “liked songs”  on this screen because that’s what they are used to doing when they create playlists. So I used this insight to make the next iteration more intuitive by guiding the user through the liked songs page to pick a few songs to start the playlist.

Another indication that people go to their “liked songs” or “library” to create a playlist using songs they already have saved.

Mid-Fidelity Prototype

For my mid-fi, I used the atomic design principles to build out my “atoms” and “molecules” that would later become icons, buttons, and footers that I used repeatedly throughout the entire design.

 After testing my mid-fi, I added a few more changes to the layout of the screens and updated the prototype with colors and pictures for my hi-fi.

Hi-Fidelity Prototype

Here is a high level overview of my hi-fi prototype. I tried my best to make it look as close as possible to Spotify’s interface!

Here’s a step-by-step micro-level view:

The process begins by going to the library and pressing “create playlist”and giving it a name. Let’s say we are going on a road trip!

After pressing “add songs” users would go directly to the liked songs page and would be prompted to choose as many songs as they would like to start the playlist as a basis for the “vibe.” Once a few songs are selected, users go to “Find your vibe” which is where they can specify preferences for suggestions.

The tag can be defined as a label or set or labels attached to each song. Songs can have several tags that describe their “vibe” or mood. Tags are reported by users themselves, and the most prominent tag is displayed on these screens. However, if the user wants to find songs with the same tag, they can click each tag to be taken to the “tag dashboard” where songs with the same tag are listed. — This is yet another way that users can add songs of a certain “vibe” and find new music!

Then, users go through the filter feature of drop down menus to select their specific criteria for suggestions. Here, the user can be as  specific  or as  vague  as they would like, to accommodate very specific preferences and those who are more open to a variety of suggestions.

Spotify will first recommend songs within the library of saved music and users will have the option to add all or a add a few to their playlist.

Then, there will be an option to add *new* songs that are similar and also fall under the user’s preferences that were designated earlier.

The user can also share their playlist with a friend for collaboration!

Here’s a link  to my presentation if you would like to see a live walk through of the hi-fi!  (Go to slide 30)

Success and Failure Metrics

We will know if the new feature is a success through these metrics:

• Less time creating playlist
• Higher Satisfaction
• More People Use Feature
• Save newly recommended music

And we will know if the feature is a failure through these metrics:

• More time creating playlist
• Lower Satisfaction
• Users don’t Use Feature
• Disproval of recommended music

Knowledge Gaps

If I had more time, I would’ve loved to do some in-person usability testing with some of my friends to get some more insights on the way they use Spotify. I would’ve also loved to dive deeper with a second round of interviews focusing on the other music streaming platforms that they mentioned, like Youtube, to see which features they find most valuable and exactly how they use them. I believe that there are features that Spotify could potentially adopt from the other music streaming platforms that would give users additional value.

• Finish atomic design inventory
• Test the hi-fi prototype and make another iteration
• Develop the tag feature for multiple functions

I am not the user even if I use the app! Although I am a loyal Spotify user , I had to keep reminding myself not to accept my assumptions as facts. It’s a universal UX principal to always keep the users at the center of the design.  

Adopt the users’ language and make it a part of the product! Like I mentioned earlier, the word “ vibe ” kept coming up in my interviews, so I knew that this is something that may be universally understood across the music listening community. I incorporated it into my design to further relate to the users and use a language that they can appreciate.

Overall, this project was extremely rewarding! Spotify is an already amazing music streaming platform with features that go above and beyond. So the challenge to create an additional feature that adds value was definitely challenging. I enjoyed going every step of the Design Thinking Process and being able to go all the way through a hi-fi prototype!

Let me know if you have any thoughts or comments! Feel free to connect with me on  LinkedIn  as well. And if you’re in the mood to listen to some of my *very much incomplete* playlists, here’s my  Spotify .

• Consumer products , Content and Copy , Design , Interface and Navigation Design , Product Releases and Redesigns , Prototypes , Visual Design

Delawit Assefa is a UX/UI Designer in the Washington D.C. Area, a recent first-generation college graduate looking for new opportunities. She is passionate about user-centered design, problem-solving, and storytelling through different mediums and is looking forward to creating meaningful experiences and bridging the gap between technology and human experiences through design in her career.

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Case Study—Spotify

• First Online: 04 August 2018

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This chapter follows on from the previous chapter’s discussion and provides an in-depth analysis of how Spotify found a solution to the digital recording industry’s financial woe persisted since Napster. It examines how this successful legitimate digital music service innovation arose in the least likely place, Sweden, the hotbed of piracy, and addresses major attributes that brought victory to Spotify over the then seemingly unflinching popularity of P2P file-sharing. I continue the discussion on the changing dynamics brought by Spotify and some of the concerns emerging around this new digital music consumption platform.

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For more discussion on this, see this chapter, Sect. 5.2.2 .

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CASE STUDY: Spotify Spotify: An Early Adopter of Containers, Spotify Is Migrating from Homegrown Orchestration to Kubernetes

Launched in 2008, the audio-streaming platform has grown to over 200 million monthly active users across the world. "Our goal is to empower creators and enable a really immersive listening experience for all of the consumers that we have today—and hopefully the consumers we'll have in the future," says Jai Chakrabarti, Director of Engineering, Infrastructure and Operations. An early adopter of microservices and Docker, Spotify had containerized microservices running across its fleet of VMs with a homegrown container orchestration system called Helios . By late 2017, it became clear that "having a small team working on the features was just not as efficient as adopting something that was supported by a much bigger community," he says.

"We saw the amazing community that had grown up around Kubernetes, and we wanted to be part of that," says Chakrabarti. Kubernetes was more feature-rich than Helios. Plus, "we wanted to benefit from added velocity and reduced cost, and also align with the rest of the industry on best practices and tools." At the same time, the team wanted to contribute its expertise and influence in the flourishing Kubernetes community. The migration, which would happen in parallel with Helios running, could go smoothly because "Kubernetes fit very nicely as a complement and now as a replacement to Helios," says Chakrabarti.

The team spent much of 2018 addressing the core technology issues required for a migration, which started late that year and is a big focus for 2019. "A small percentage of our fleet has been migrated to Kubernetes, and some of the things that we've heard from our internal teams are that they have less of a need to focus on manual capacity provisioning and more time to focus on delivering features for Spotify," says Chakrabarti. The biggest service currently running on Kubernetes takes about 10 million requests per second as an aggregate service and benefits greatly from autoscaling, says Site Reliability Engineer James Wen. Plus, he adds, "Before, teams would have to wait for an hour to create a new service and get an operational host to run it in production, but with Kubernetes, they can do that on the order of seconds and minutes." In addition, with Kubernetes's bin-packing and multi-tenancy capabilities, CPU utilization has improved on average two- to threefold.

An early adopter of microservices and Docker, Spotify had containerized microservices running across its fleet of VMs since 2014. The company used an open source, homegrown container orchestration system called Helios, and in 2016-17 completed a migration from on premise data centers to Google Cloud. Underpinning these decisions, "We have a culture around autonomous teams, over 200 autonomous engineering squads who are working on different pieces of the pie, and they need to be able to iterate quickly," Chakrabarti says. "So for us to have developer velocity tools that allow squads to move quickly is really important."

But by late 2017, it became clear that "having a small team working on the Helios features was just not as efficient as adopting something that was supported by a much bigger community," says Chakrabarti. "We saw the amazing community that had grown up around Kubernetes, and we wanted to be part of that. We wanted to benefit from added velocity and reduced cost, and also align with the rest of the industry on best practices and tools." At the same time, the team wanted to contribute its expertise and influence in the flourishing Kubernetes community.

Another plus: "Kubernetes fit very nicely as a complement and now as a replacement to Helios, so we could have it running alongside Helios to mitigate the risks," says Chakrabarti. "During the migration, the services run on both, so we're not having to put all of our eggs in one basket until we can validate Kubernetes under a variety of load circumstances and stress circumstances."

The team spent much of 2018 addressing the core technology issues required for the migration. "We were able to use a lot of the Kubernetes APIs and extensibility features of Kubernetes to support and interface with our legacy infrastructure, so the integration was straightforward and easy," says Site Reliability Engineer James Wen.

Migration started late that year and has accelerated in 2019. "Our focus is really on stateless services, and once we address our last remaining technology blocker, that's where we hope that the uptick will come from," says Chakrabarti. "For stateful services there's more work that we need to do."

A small percentage of Spotify's fleet, containing over 150 services, has been migrated to Kubernetes so far. "We've heard from our customers that they have less of a need to focus on manual capacity provisioning and more time to focus on delivering features for Spotify," says Chakrabarti. The biggest service currently running on Kubernetes takes over 10 million requests per second as an aggregate service and benefits greatly from autoscaling, says Wen. Plus, Wen adds, "Before, teams would have to wait for an hour to create a new service and get an operational host to run it in production, but with Kubernetes, they can do that on the order of seconds and minutes." In addition, with Kubernetes's bin-packing and multi-tenancy capabilities, CPU utilization has improved on average two- to threefold.

Chakrabarti points out that for all four of the top-level metrics that Spotify looks at—lead time, deployment frequency, time to resolution, and operational load—"there is impact that Kubernetes is having."

One success story that's come out of the early days of Kubernetes is a tool called Slingshot that a Spotify team built on Kubernetes. "With a pull request, it creates a temporary staging environment that self destructs after 24 hours," says Chakrabarti. "It's all facilitated by Kubernetes, so that's kind of an exciting example of how, once the technology is out there and ready to use, people start to build on top of it and craft their own solutions, even beyond what we might have envisioned as the initial purpose of it."

Spotify has also started to use gRPC and Envoy , replacing existing homegrown solutions, just as it had with Kubernetes. "We created things because of the scale we were at, and there was no other solution existing," says Dave Zolotusky, Software Engineer, Infrastructure and Operations. "But then the community kind of caught up and surpassed us, even for tools that work at that scale."

Both of those technologies are in early stages of adoption, but already "we have reason to believe that gRPC will have a more drastic impact during early development by helping with a lot of issues like schema management, API design, weird backward compatibility issues, things like that," says Zolotusky. "So we're leaning heavily on gRPC to help us in that space."

As the team continues to fill out Spotify's cloud native stack—tracing is up next—it is using the CNCF landscape as a helpful guide. "We look at things we need to solve, and if there are a bunch of projects, we evaluate them equivalently, but there is definitely value to the project being a CNCF project," says Zolotusky.

Spotify's experiences so far with Kubernetes bears this out. "The community has been extremely helpful in getting us to work through all the technology much faster and much easier," Zolotusky says. "It's been surprisingly easy to get in touch with anybody we wanted to, to get expertise on any of the things we're working with. And it's helped us validate all the things we're doing."

Table of Contents

Spotify target audience, marketing strategy of spotify, 5 takeaways from spotify marketing strategy, a case study on spotify marketing strategy.

Emerging as a powerful music streaming platform for millennials, Spotify's rise to success has been quite incredible. Currently, it boasts over 299 million subscribers across over 100 markets. Spotify provides music on an international streaming platform where users can listen to their favorite artists and the top musicians can make their playlists, promote their music and connect with their fans better. Founded in 2006, Spotify was curated by Daniel Ek with the simple concept of combating music piracy to help artists get their compensation more ethically. Now, it has almost all top emerging singers and composers as well as local artists on its platform because of its simplicity and marketing strategy . Let's understand Spotify's marketing strategy through this case study. 

Become a Certified Marketing Expert in 8 Months

Spotify's target audience is millennials, with its primary market set in the USA. Along with this, Spotify has been known to target students and business professionals as a platform because of their time spent listening to music online. Here is a table classifying Spotify target audience in different sections:

Let’s take a look at some of the critical features of Spotify marketing strategy that helped the platform reach the top:

Freemium Model is the USP of Spotify

The key feature of this platform is that it’s free for users only, with some ads playing between the music. It has been found that this freemium model approach has worked amazingly for Spotify because users can take benefit of free music without paying for a subscription. Spotify also made the most of this feature to promote ads in between to keep coercing the users consciously or subconsciously to sign up for premium to listen to music without any ad breaks. This unique marketing hack helped it boost its subscriber base around the world. 

A Minimalistic App Interface

Another critical aspect of Spotify’s marketing strategy is that its user interface in the app, as well as chrome, is entirely minimalistic, easy to understand and classy. This makes it a top choice for music fans as well as performers. 

Connecting With Artists for Collaborations

Spotify has close ties with the top artists of almost every mainstream industry. This provides users with a way to connect to their top artists, which leads to open live nights, another lovely way to attract more subscribers taking benefit of exclusive content!

Emotional Ads for Promotion

Even in India, Spotify ads often focus on a family, adding a punch of fun and emotional intensity. So, either you will find ads during Christmas, Diwali, etc. These cultural ads can popularize the brand better through a long-lasting impact.

Personalized at its Core

Spotify’s AI interface has been conceptualized to personalize as per its users. Now, whether it’s a millennial using Spotify for podcasts or music or Gen X searching trending Instagram music. Spotify is ready to personalize all their preferences.

Here are the top takeaways from Spotify Marketing Strategy:

• The Freemium model works incredibly for users as well as the platform. This is because the users are getting free music while listening to ads, which seems like a perfect two-way venture for a business.
• Putting emotions in its ads can also better transform your connection with the target audience and boost your reach internationally and locally.
• Strategic partnerships with artists, their labels, trending musicians, and podcasters is another way to keep things refreshed. 
• A more straightforward and smooth AI interface makes the experience more personalized and highly user-centric. 

Thus, we hope this blog provides you with all the details of Spotify marketing strategy. Curious about digital marketing and want to make a career in it? Then, Simplilearn has the perfect course for you to learn from the world’s top marketing professionals. Sign-up for our Digital Marketing Specialist training program .

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Spotify Branding Strategy and Marketing Case Study

Analysis and examples of spotify’s identity, positioning, key messages, tone of voice, brand archetypes, customer benefits, competitors, and marketing content..

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Brand Overview

• Entertainment & Media

Business Type

Software Service

https://www.spotify.com

Target Customer

Music & Audio Content Fan

Primary Need ( Job To Be Done )

Access all my favorite music and audio content no matter what device I’m using

Brand Visual Identity & Content

Primary brand colors, brand typefaces.

• Spotify Circular

Hero Content

Hero Content Type

Illustration

Content Features People

Brand messaging, key messages, benefit or feature focus, tone of voice, brand archetypes.

( Learn More About Brand Archetypes )

Everyperson

Brand Positioning ( Elements of Value )

( Learn More About The Elements of Value )

Aspirational

Affiliation & Belonging

Fun & Entertainment

Brand Benefits

Immediate access to all the music and audio content I enjoy in one location

Easy way to share music with others to build personal connections and feel a sense of belonging

Source for discovering new music and audio content to expand my interests and enjoyment

Competition

Key competitors.

Apple Music , YouTube , Amazon Music, Tidal, Pandora, Deezer

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Cracking The Code: Case Study On Spotify Marketing Strategy

Spotify is a music streaming service that was launched in 2008 and has since become one of the leading players in the industry. 

Spotify’s rise to success has been quite phenomenal, as it has become one of the most powerful streaming music platforms for millennials. In addition to boasting over 299 million subscribers in more than 100 markets, Spotify also provides a streaming music service through which users can listen to their favourite musicians as well as top musicians can create playlists, promote their music and connect with their fans.

As a company founded in 2006 by Daniel Ek with the simple concept of combating music piracy and ensuring that artists are compensated fairly, Spotify has helped artists receive fair compensation for their works. As a result of its simplicity and marketing strategy, it has attracted most top emerging singers and composers as well as local artists.

In the captivating blog we will reveal the spotify marketing strategy case study which includes spotify marketing strategy analysis and will discuss the spotify business model! Continue reading!

WHAT ARE THE THREE ASPECTS OF SUCCESSFUL SPOTIFY MARKETING STRATEGY ?

As a roundabout, the company’s marketing strategy is centered on three main aspects: user acquisition, user engagement, and revenue generation.

USER ACQUISITION:

First and most important aspect of spotify marketing strategy is user acquisition. Spotify uses a variety of tactics to acquire new users, including social media advertising, partnerships with other companies, and offering free trials of its premium service. One of the key ways Spotify has been able to acquire new users is through its partnerships with other companies. For example, Spotify has partnered with companies like Samsung, Uber, and Google to offer their users access to the Spotify service. Additionally, Spotify has also used social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to promote its service and acquire new users.

USER ENGAGEMENT: 

User engagement is another aspect of the marketing strategy of spotify. In an effort to engage its existing users, Spotify offers customised playlists and recommendations based on their listening history and preferences. Additionally, the company regularly updates its mobile app with new features and improvements to keep users interested. Also, Spotify offers a number of features to help users discover new music, such as the “Discover Weekly” and “Release Radar” playlists, which are personalised based on listening history.

REVENUE GENERATION:

Last but not the least, revenue generation is another significant aspect of Spotify marketing strategy! Spotify generates revenue through its premium service, which offers ad-free listening as well as offline listening. As well as its in-app purchases and subscriptions, the company generates revenue through partnerships with brands and artists. In addition to selling ads to brands, Spotify is also offering targeted ads to specific groups of users, which is a new way for the company to monetize its platform.

Through its premium service and partnerships, Spotify aims to acquire new users, engage its existing user base, and generate revenue. The Spotify app also offers a wide range of features such as personalized playlists, radio stations, and friends’ playlists, which enable it to differentiate itself from other streaming services.

What Is Spotify Digital Marketing Strategy?

Spotify digital marketing strategy focuses on leveraging data-driven insights, personalised recommendations, and engaging content to create a seamless user experience. They employ targeted advertising campaigns, social media engagement, influencer partnerships, and user-generated content to connect with their audience.

Furthermore, Spotify utilises data analytics to understand user preferences and behaviour, enabling them to deliver relevant ads and curated playlists. Spotify marketing strategy emphasises building brand loyalty, expanding user base, and enhancing the overall music streaming experience through innovative marketing tactics.

What Are Spotify Marketing Strategy For Social Media

As a part of marketing strategy Spotify uses social media platforms to reach a wider audience. Check at a glance the spotify social media marketing strategy!

• Creating engaging content to connect with fans and potential listeners
• Collaborating with influencers and creators to expand reach and visibility
• Utilising targeted ads to reach specific demographics and music enthusiasts
• Encouraging user-generated content and sharing playlists to foster community engagement
• Analysing data and insights to optimise marketing efforts and track spotify marketing campaigns success.

Spotify Marketing Strategy In India

Spotify’s expansion into the Indian market presented unique challenges and opportunities. The company recognized the immense potential of India’s music-loving population and devised a tailored marketing strategy to capture this market. By offering competitive pricing, localising content, and partnering with popular Indian artists and influencers, Spotify effectively positioned itself as a strong competitor in the Indian music streaming industry.

What Are Some Notable Spotify Marketing Campaigns?

As a part of Spotify marketing strategy it has executed numerous impactful marketing campaigns that have resonated with its target audience and helped propel its growth. Let’s examine some notable examples:

Discover Weekly: The Power of Personalization

The launch of Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist was a game-changer for the platform. By utilising machine learning algorithms to curate personalised playlists for individual users, Spotify tapped into the desire for customised experiences and kept users engaged by delivering fresh music tailored to their tastes.

Wrapped: Engaging Users through Yearly Summaries

Wrapped, an annual personalised summary of a user’s listening habits, has become a highly anticipated event for Spotify users. By gamifying the experience and encouraging users to share their Wrapped statistics on social media, Spotify effectively generated buzz and promoted user engagement, further solidifying its brand presence.

Collaborations with Artists: Building Brand Affinity

Spotify has strategically collaborated with artists to create exclusive content and campaigns. Notable examples include the partnership with Billie Eilish for the release of her debut album, “WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?” This collaboration allowed Spotify to leverage the artist’s massive fan base and generate excitement around the album release, showcasing its marketing prowess.

What Is The Underlying Business Model Of Spotify?

When we are discussing the Spotify business model, it is essential to understand the key elements that drive the company’s success. Spotify operates on a freemium model, offering free access to music supported by ads, while also providing a premium subscription option that removes ads and unlocks additional features. The platform generates revenue through advertising, premium subscriptions, and partnerships with record labels and artists. Furthermore, Spotify utilises sophisticated data analytics and recommendation algorithms to personalise the user experience and promote music discovery. By diversifying into the podcast industry, Spotify business strategy expands its offerings and attracts a broader user base. Through these strategic initiatives, Spotify has established itself as a leading player in the music streaming industry, continually adapting its business model to meet the evolving demands of users and content creators.

Summing Up!

Overall, Spotify marketing strategy has been highly effective in helping the company acquire new users, engage its existing user base, and generate revenue through its premium service and partnerships. Additionally, the company’s focus on personalization, data, and analytics has helped Spotify to stand out from the competition and become one of the leading players in the music streaming industry.

Get inspired

Reach your goals with spotify., spotify's quick start guide to creating digital audio ads, ready to be heard, looking for something a little more custom let's talk..

.css-s5s6ko{margin-right:42px;color:#F5F4F3;}@media (max-width: 1120px){.css-s5s6ko{margin-right:12px;}} Discover how today’s most successful IT leaders stand out from the rest. .css-1ixh9fn{display:inline-block;}@media (max-width: 480px){.css-1ixh9fn{display:block;margin-top:12px;}} .css-1uaoevr-heading-6{font-size:14px;line-height:24px;font-weight:500;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;color:#F5F4F3;}.css-1uaoevr-heading-6:hover{color:#F5F4F3;} .css-ora5nu-heading-6{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:flex-start;justify-content:flex-start;color:#0D0E10;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s;transition:all 0.3s;position:relative;font-size:16px;line-height:28px;padding:0;font-size:14px;line-height:24px;font-weight:500;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;color:#F5F4F3;}.css-ora5nu-heading-6:hover{border-bottom:0;color:#CD4848;}.css-ora5nu-heading-6:hover path{fill:#CD4848;}.css-ora5nu-heading-6:hover div{border-color:#CD4848;}.css-ora5nu-heading-6:hover div:before{border-left-color:#CD4848;}.css-ora5nu-heading-6:active{border-bottom:0;background-color:#EBE8E8;color:#0D0E10;}.css-ora5nu-heading-6:active path{fill:#0D0E10;}.css-ora5nu-heading-6:active div{border-color:#0D0E10;}.css-ora5nu-heading-6:active div:before{border-left-color:#0D0E10;}.css-ora5nu-heading-6:hover{color:#F5F4F3;} Read the report .css-1k6cidy{width:11px;height:11px;margin-left:8px;}.css-1k6cidy path{fill:currentColor;}

Spotify teams drive programs forward with Asana

50% increase.

Increased production of advertising campaigns for clients by 50% each month

2x the number of campaigns

Doubled internal project managers’ capacity through streamlined advertising campaign processes

Automated Asana administration

Centralized provisioning and deprovisioning through their identity and access management platform

Reduced manual work

Through automated processes, notifications, and intake forms

Many of Spotify’s employees use Asana to manage their work and hit growth targets, including the revenue teams that produce ad campaigns for clients and develop new lines of business, and their IT teams that ensure employees have the technology they need to do their jobs–no matter where they’re located. Asana allows them to collaborate with agencies, automate manual processes, and give leadership a view of progress against goals. Asana is managed centrally, with automated provisioning to support their global, remote-first workforce as they continue to revolutionize the audio streaming industry.

Asana has enabled us to scale advertising campaign production for Spotify and report on the impact of our team in a quantitative way.”

Automated Asana administration 

A hotel in Milan, a desk in London, a quiet spot in Tokyo: Spotify’s Work from Anywhere program encourages employees to set up their laptops where it’s best for them. As the company grows globally, teams need collaboration tools to stay connected, and Spotify employees have been adopting Asana since 2013.

We worked closely with our Asana account team to configure the platform in a way that meets our security and admin needs—and doesn’t require heavy management on our end.”

Chris Sanchez, a Senior Application Engineer at Spotify worked closely with the Asana account team in an initial setup period to fine-tune admin controls, security, and automation. Provisioning and deprovisioning is now automated through their identity and access management platform. “Asana is in the sweet spot where people can onboard and offboard automatically and create projects on their own,” he says. 

Spotify’s dedicated Asana account team is available to provide advanced training and help teams move their workflows onto the platform. If an employee has a question, they can assign their Asana account team a task directly or ask them in a dedicated Slack Connect channel. Self-serve trainings are available in an Asana project where the account team posts regular updates and shares videos of new features when they launch.

Scaling up with Asana

Revenue teams at Spotify use Asana to scale operations, automate manual workflows, and pilot new initiatives as a globally connected organization.

Creative Operations, Scaled Marketing Services teams: Increasing advertising revenue

Creative Operations team within Scaled Marketing Services took over the full scope of post-sale campaign production work and moved from disparate email workflows to a centralized Asana workflow to support the growing volume of client campaigns. 

When an Account Manager submits a request for a campaign they’ve sold via an Asana form , this submission creates an Asana task for the Creative Operations team to triage. Then they use a project template with execution steps and assign it to an internal project manager or a third-party agency. Asana rules automate steps as campaign development progresses.

We track the progress of campaigns in Asana as they move through production, which gives us visibility, because we can track granular details without losing anything.”

Asana dashboards offer real-time reporting on campaign status, providing a holistic view of what each agency is working on, SLA delivery, and how many assets were produced. Managers can see when a campaign is overdue and which agencies and teammates have the bandwidth to help out.

Blair Wilson, Senior Manager at Spotify says, “Interconnectivity is a highlight of Asana. All our systems are in one place, from billing to third-party production to campaign templates, and speak to each other for custom reporting.”

The Creative Operations team now executes global ad production at scale. This has been supported by a proven 50% increase in the total number of campaigns the team can manage and 100% increase in the number of campaigns each project manager can handle per month which has enabled them to produce more client ad campaigns that drive revenue growth for Spotify.

Asana is our air traffic control. We have the visibility to scale production and support a higher number of ad campaigns to support our revenue goals.”

Revenue engineering team: Supporting revenue streams and building new ones

Spotify’s Revenue Engineering team receives a high volume of feature requests from stakeholders. They previously managed them in a variety of channels–like spreadsheets, chat, email, etc.–but switched to Asana for centralized intake, designing a process to take requests through the product development cycle and report on their status. 

Stakeholders fill out an Asana form to request a new feature or enhancement, which creates an Asana task that is automatically assigned to the correct product manager for triage, based on the type specified in the form. 

Asana is very stakeholder friendly and breaks down barriers between technical engineering teams and business teams. When our stakeholders have questions, we can point them to a single source of truth for project status and a view of what we’re currently prioritizing.”

When the product manager commits to the work, the task is also added to a master tracker Asana project that shows all requested features in one place — a source of truth for both stakeholders and Revenue Engineering to see where work stands. Custom fields on the task indicate the feature’s status in the product cycle and more technical details around development progress tracked using the Asana-JIRA Integration . The requesting stakeholder is added to the task as a collaborator and receives automated notifications as custom field values change to reflect the feature’s progress. 

The new visibility has removed the need for many large group status meetings and simplified the formerly time-consuming process of pulling data for status reports by compiling and sending updates asynchronously. 

Network Infrastructure & Operations team: Enabling employees to work from anywhere

Spotify’s Network Infrastructure and Operations team began using Asana back in 2018 to manage technology implementations for new offices around the world. Before they were coordinating with local teams and external vendors in a mix of spreadsheets, email, chat, and other tools. 

When the team discovered Asana, they created a template that captured internal, network, and external requirements for tech implementations for each stage of the project. The ability to easily onboard external contractors into a project and assign them tasks directly improved accountability and transparency for the team managing multiple office builds globally. This significantly improved their ability to build out new offices on time and collaborate across time zones without needing hours of meetings to stay aligned.  

Asana has helped us significantly improve our asynchronous communication so we can reduce meetings, share information, and have visibility into work happening across the team.”

Over the years, the team has moved more of their work into Asana and now runs different workstreams–from managing their IT roadmap to software migrations to their day-to-day work–in the platform. And Harry can oversee all projects in flight across the team in their portfolio so he knows where to focus his time and can easily report on progress to leadership.

What’s next: press play

Teams across Spotify will continue to manage their work and streamline their processes in Asana to support the company’s efforts to deliver the best audio experience to its listeners.

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Empower your entire organization to do their best work with Asana.

Spotify: An ITIL® Case Study

• IT Services
• Digital transformation

Author   Ola Källgården

Management Consultant, Olingo Consulting AB

February 3, 2019  |

  15  min read

Spotify is the largest global music streaming subscription service. It is building a two-sided music marketplace for users and artists, which is powered by data, analytics, and software.

In this case study, Ola Källgården reveals how Olingo, a Swedish management consulting company, helped Spotify to embrace the principles of ITIL.

To read the rest of this white paper and to get access to all of Axelos' white papers, please log in or create a user profile .

About Olingo Consulting

Olingo is a Swedish-based management consulting company that works in both the IT service management and agile communities. Most of Olingo’s assignments are focused on striking the right balance between control and agility and finding a relevant level of steering and structure, while also allowing innovation and experimentation, upholding compliance, and maintaining efficiency. Olingo also delivers training services in the form of courses and simulations within the ITIL, DevOps, Management3.0 and Agile methods.

About Spotify

Spotify’s mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving one million artists the opportunity to live off their art, and billions of fans the chance to enjoy and be inspired by these creators.

Spotify is the largest global music streaming subscription service. It is building a two-sided music marketplace for users and artists, which is powered by data, analytics, and software. Spotify provides fans with a way to discover and enjoy music, and artists with an additional avenue to make money and showcase their creative works. For artists, Spotify provides a platform from which they can reach and interact with their fans, as well as analytics which provide a better and more thorough understanding of their fan base.

Introduction

A key message within Spotify is speed. Making deliveries flow is paramount to maximizing resource utilization. The underlying drive is the need to deliver and improve faster than the competition. In the words of Jack Welch, ‘if the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change inside, the end is near’.

The importance of speed, together with a culture of continuous improvement and autonomy, has a profound impact on the way that processes are designed and improved at Spotify. The focus lies on the purpose and objective of the process rather than on the process activities.

In 2017, the organizational growth at Spotify was massive. Teams that used to work side by side now found themselves scattered around the world. The pending introduction on the American stock exchange introduced new compliance requirements. The organization experienced growth pains, and the need for company-wide policies and common ways of working increased.

Olingo Consulting was contracted to support part of the organization in striking the right balance between control and agility, including the financial systems (FS) support team, which was highly impacted by the regulatory requirements.

The Olingo consultants were brought in to act as agile coaches, and their mission was to gently guide each team by leading them in the right direction. Olingo worked closely with other agile coaches within Spotify on this assignment. There was no project or organizational change programme, and the results were to be reached as part of continuous improvement activities.

The following areas were within the scope of the assignment:

• Managing flow Finding an efficient way to manage the total workload for the teams, including change requests, incidents, technical debt and projects.
• Managing compliance Ensuring that the controls were in place to comply with the regulation imposed by the financial bodies.

At Spotify, work is organized around cross functional, autonomous teams. This means that each team possesses all the capabilities required to drive a piece of work all the way to completion. Hand-offs from one team to another are rare, and avoided wherever possible. Each team is responsible for achieving its mission and reaching its goals but, in return, has the mandate to form a way of working that best fits the team. The FS team is responsible for delivering IT services that are used by internal functions, such as tax, procurement and accounting. When Olingo began working with Spotify, these services were running on an enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform and the FS team was responsible for developing the services as well as improving and supporting them. These services were highly impacted by the compliance requirements imposed by the regulatory bodies. In addition, the FS team had a key challenge at this stage, to move from an on-premise ERP to a mix of various best in class cloud ERPs, in a very limited timeframe. Due to the time constraints, most people involved thought this could not be done in time.

Many other teams at Spotify were impacted by Olingo’s work, but for this case study, only the FS team will be used as an example, and referred to as ‘the team’.

The Spotify culture and ITIL

Transparency, visualization and an agile mindset are, together with speed, the driving forces and mantras within the Spotify organization. A key part of the agile mindset is the concept of mission command and autonomous teams. The teams at Spotify were used to getting a clear mission and then, internally within the team, forming the tactics and capabilities to deliver. This mindset had a profound impact on how work was performed and improvements made.

When Olingo began its assignment, ITIL, as a framework, was relatively unknown within the Spotify organization, and some staff members felt that using frameworks slowed them down. However, closer scrutiny proved that very few of the staff members making these remarks had any first-hand experience with ITIL. The ITIL framework served to guide the work being carried out, and implicit references were made to several of the ITIL processes throughout the assignment, including change management, demand management, incident management and request fulfilment.

Managing flow

One challenge for the team was to manage and prioritize the workload in an efficient manner. The team had several customers within the organization, and each of them expected the team to focus on their function’s specific needs. Another challenge was managing the different types of work the team was responsible for performing. Requests for new features from internal customers were mixed with support requests and the need to work on technical debt and strategic projects.

A ticket management tool was in place and being used, but there was difficulty in understanding the order of priority of the tickets logged in the system. The ticket management system was a great place for storing information, but it was not providing great visibility of the total workload. What was needed was a way to visualize the workload so that items could be prioritized, and flow created. However, visualizing the team’s workload was just the first step. In total, four key challenges were identified:

• visualizing the total workload
• managing work overload
• coordinating the needs of internal customers
• managing different types of work.

Visualizing the Total Workload

To get a clear view of the workload, it first had to be lifted out of the ticket management system. The concept of Kanban and a Kanban board was widely spread within Spotify but had not, until then, been used by the team. The work being done by Olingo and their fellow coaches provided a great opportunity to make use of Kanban, in conjunction with ITIL, to track and prioritize different processes carried out by the team. A portable whiteboard was used, and tickets from the ticket management tool printed. The first version was basic, but kicked off discussions and ideas for improvement. The work items were sorted into columns, with each column representing a stage in the workflow, for example ‘to do’ or ‘work in progress’. One challenge that immediately became obvious was the size of the workload. Even if the team had realized that the workload was hidden in the ticket management system, the situation was worse than expected.

Managing Work Overload

To make the workload manageable, work in progress (WIP) limits were introduced for each column. The WIP limits provide an upper boundary on how many work items can be allowed in each column. A limit of three would mean that a maximum of three work items would be allowed at any one time. To ensure that each item had an owner and that individual staff members were not overloaded, so called ‘avatars’ were introduced. An avatar is a representation of a team member, in this case in the form of a whiteboard magnet with the person’s picture on it. For each team member there were two magnets, meaning that a team member could be assigned a maximum of two work items at the same time.

Now that the workload was visualized the next challenge became apparent; how could the work items in the ’To do’ column be managed? This was particularly problematic as most of the work items in this column came from outside of the team.

Coordinating the Needs of Internal Customers

The team had several customers within the organization, each with their own specific needs, requirements and expectations regarding the IT services provided by the team. An advisory board, similar to a change advisory board (CAB) found in ITIL, was needed. However, merely making decisions and planning changes and feature requests would not suffice. Getting input on changes and new feature requests would surely help, but the team would still be left with the challenge of prioritizing its entire workload. This included prioritizing different ITIL processes, such as both incidents and service requests, against change requests.

As a first step, weekly planning meetings were arranged and key stakeholders from each internal customer invited. The visualization of the total workload was an eye opener to all the stakeholders. It was easy for them to see that pushing more work on the team when they were already at full capacity would not move things forward. Just getting the stakeholders together in the same room created a world of difference compared to meeting with them individually. Constructive discussions started and synergies between the stakeholders emerged. Above all, the stakeholders realized that the team had limited capacity and that there was a need to prioritize what was most important for the entire organization, not only for the individual function.

There were still times when everything seemed urgent and of equal importance, but instead of breaking the WIP limit of the ‘to do’ column, the team found another way. They simply left the room and asked the stakeholders to come to an agreement of what work should be prioritised, in line with the ITIL guiding principle of ‘focus on value’. It should not be for the team to decide what is most important from a business perspective.

Managing Different Types of Work

The customer meetings made it possible to choose and prioritize the work items coming from the business. However, there were other types of work items in the team’s total workload and some of them, such as resolving technical debt, were not on the customers’ radar. After some discussion it was agreed that the work items could be divided into four categories:

• enhancements (new features and changes)
• technical debt

This made the other types of work items visible to the customers but, as the customer saw their enhancement and support requests as more urgent, technical debt and project work still had difficulties reaching the WIP column. The team realized that something had to be done to make those work items that were less urgent, but equally important, flow. The solution was to introduce limits on the different types of work. Even though this created some initial protests from the customers, it proved successful in the long run as the customers started to see the positive impact of removing technical debt and increasing the overall quality of the IT service.

In addition to the weekly planning meetings with the business, the team conducted daily stand-ups to ensure that work was on track and blockers removed. Retrospectives with the objective of improving the ways of working were also performed, both in planned meetings and as daily improvement activities. New things were tested, some of which were kept and others discarded.

Benefits realized included:

• Increased work flow More work items were completed, and lead times shortened.
• Reduced waste More time was spent on the work items that created most value.
• Increased quality More technical debt was resolved, and work on infrastructure projects increased.
• Improved relationships with and between customers The visualization and regular meetings that were set up created synergies and mutual understanding of the needs and situation of each stakeholder involved.

Managing compliance

The other part of Olingo’s assignment focused on ensuring that the regulatory controls, imposed and audited by financial bodies due to the stock exchange entry, were adhered to.

The concept of team autonomy had an important role to play in this case. The plan was to introduce generic change, test and release management processes to roll out to all the teams that were impacted by the financial regulation. There were several specific controls to comply with, but the ones that impacted the financial teams the most were the segregation of duty and audit trail requirements. Segregation of duty means that relevant, and separate, roles must be involved in testing and approving changes, and audit trailing means that it must be possible to track all changes made to the financial system.

The processes were drafted, and the team owning the process tool was involved to make the necessary changes to the workflows in the tool. Meetings to go through the processes and planned tool updates with each team and decide how to perform the implementation were arranged. However, instead of getting the acceptance that was expected, Olingo were hit by a flood of questions and comments:

• Why do we need these controls? They seem to slow us down.
• Why should we have a change process that looks like that? We already keep track of all our changes but we work differently to that.
• Why does that role and person need to be involved? They don’t have the time to approve on that level.
• Why are we making that change to the process tool? We use categories in a different way.

Some of the questions and comments could be easily addressed while others proved more difficult to answer. The team autonomy had led to vastly different ways of working and individual ways of using the process tool. The Olingo consultants had made the mistake of acting as teachers instead of coaches and it was clear that they would have to re-think their tactics. They re-grouped and approached the assignment from a different angle, reformulating the message as:

‘These are the regulatory rules you need to comply with. They are a requirement for reaching the organizational goal of stock exchange entry. You need to find a way to comply with these rules. We, together with the internal audit team and the process tool team, are here to help you.’

That message had a completely different effect. The teams listened carefully to the requirements and asked questions to get clarifications. Examples of questions that were raised include:

It was clear that each team had an underlying objective in mind, to comply with the controls while maintaining minimum impact on flow and speed.

The outcome was that each team had its own way to successfully fulfil its requirements, including its own process flows, configuration of the process tool, and way of interacting with key stakeholders. This could have increased some costs and caused some challenges, especially for the auditors, but the drawbacks were overshadowed by the benefits. The flow of work increased, as each team could create a process that fit its own requirements. This, in combination with the benefits of each team taking full responsibility for complying with the controls, and not having the option of blaming a faulty process, created far more value to the organization in the long run.

• Can we set up categories of changes and have different approval flows for them?
• Is it enough to document the reason for the change in the change ticket?
• How can we get approval if a key role is vacant or absent?
• If a change has been approved at an earlier step in the process, does the technical update need approval before being put into production?

The entry on the American stock exchange was successful and the improvement work continues at Spotify. Staff interest in ITIL has increased since the assignment, as the value of the framework has become clear, and recently, Olingo delivered formal ITIL training at Spotify. Although the adoption of ITIL is still ongoing at Spotify, the organization is making great steps towards improving its processes, and already understands and adheres to the ITIL principles better than most companies. They have realized that processes should not be created and obeyed just for the sake of it. The ITIL framework is based on best practice and common sense and Spotify has plenty of that. The processes are there to support the organization in achieving its goals and, as long as the process fulfils its objectives and constraints, there are no rules for its design.

About the author

Passionate about striking the right balance between order and chaos, Ola Källgården bends and twists frameworks, models and philosophies into something that is truly useful.

Ola has experience from a range of different roles within the IT world, including developer, business analyst, project manager, organizational change manager and management consultant.

Apart from guiding and coaching clients Ola is also a public speaker as well as an acclaimed and accredited ITIL and DevOps trainer.

Spotify: An ITIL case study infographic

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Spotify: An ITIL case study

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A Case Study on Spotify: Exploring Perceptions of the Music Streaming Service

Kate swanson indiana university (undergraduate student paper).

Spotify is a commercial music streaming service providing music content from a range of major and independent record labels. Spotify users can either subscribe to a “Freemium” model supported by advertisements or they can pay a premium to access additional features without advertisements. Since its inception in 2008, users of this service have totaled twenty million, five million of them paying monthly fees of either US$4.99 or $9.99. Prominent artists such as Taylor Swift and The Black Keys have begun speaking out about this service, some even withholding their music from the service entirely, explaining that the payment model is unfair and that the service is cannibalizing album sales. Other artists praise the service for its ability to deliver a legal alternative to piracy, where artists can capture valuable information about their listeners and are compensated on a per-play basis. Whether we like it or not, Spotify and related music streaming services represent a window into the future of the music industry. This study investigates the perceptions of streaming services like Spotify from the perspective of all parties involved: music industry professionals, artists, and consumers in order to identify perceived needs and positive developments. The conclusion offers suggestions for the future role of streaming services in the music industry based on the survey and interview results.

Keywords:   Spotify, music streaming, music industry, recording industry, music technology, digital music, music royalties

Swanson, Kate. “A Case Study on Spotify: Exploring Perceptions of the Music Streaming Service.” Journal of the Music and Entertainment Industry Educators Association 13, no. 1 (2013): 207-230. https://doi.org/10.25101/13.10

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Spotify and Substack Partner To Bring Even More Podcasts to Listeners

April 11, 2024

At Spotify, we always want to deliver more value for podcast creators and their fans. That’s why we’re excited to announce a new integration with Substack. Beginning today, Substack podcast creators globally can distribute their free and gated content to Spotify for the first time, and fans worldwide can listen to top Substack podcasts where they’re already listening to their favorite audio content. 

Substack joins a growing list of publishers and platforms offering subscriber-based content powered by Spotify Open Access , including Bankless, Dateline NBC, The Economist , Freakonomics Radio, Patreon , Supercast, Supporting Cast, The Wall Street Journal , and more. For podcast creators, the Spotify Open Access API brings an expanded opportunity to offer premium audio subscriptions to Spotify’s 602 million monthly active users.

“Spotify Open Access enables creators to grow their businesses while maintaining full control of their subscriber relationships. Our new integration with Substack empowers their creators to reach new and existing audiences where they listen most while giving Spotify listeners access to some of the world’s foremost content,” said Stephanie Shaer, Head of Partner Strategy and BD at Spotify .

With this new integration, premium podcast episodes from Substack shows like Rich Text , Split Zone Duo , and Culture Study are now available on Spotify for the first time. Emma Gray, cohost of Rich Text , a Substack podcast and newsletter about culture and entertainment, said, “We are truly so excited for our incredible community to be able to access the full breadth of our podcast offerings right on Spotify.”

“Just about everything I listen to, I listen to on Spotify,” said Alex Kirshner of Split Zone Duo , a college football podcast and newsletter on Substack . “I know I’m one of many. We’re very excited to be able to reach people on a ubiquitous platform and provide an ideal experience for our most important customers: our subscribers.”

Culture Study host Anne Helen Petersen shared, “I love feeling like we’re able to give supporters of the show a little (or a big!) treat with our subscriber content, which will now be even easier right on Spotify.”

With just a few clicks, podcast creators on Substack can add Spotify distribution to their podcasts to grow their audiences while retaining full control over their subscriber bases, their content, and their revenue. Once a creator enables distribution to Spotify from Substack , listeners can link their Substack and Spotify accounts or become subscribers through Substack to unlock access. 

Whether through Substack or any of our integrated membership platforms, if you subscribe to a podcaster’s paid show, we encourage you to connect your accounts to enjoy your favorite paid shows on Spotify.

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25% of Spotify Premium subscribers are listening to audiobooks

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Spotify certainly thinks audiobooks are going to be popular with its listeners, but do those listeners agree?

The company has put out some stats to back up its case this week. It says that 25% of Spotify Premium subscribers have been “engaging with audiobooks” since the feature launched last Autumn. That’s careful wording: it’s unclear whether it covers anyone who’s listened to an audiobook at some stage during that time, or whether it’s regular monthly listening.

More stats though: Spotify says that 18-34 year-olds account for 57% of its audiobook listeners; and that in the US “new Audiobook listeners have contributed +2.6 hours (+8.15%) overall consumption per user in the first 14 days of starting a book”.

The company is also claiming that independent authors with titles available on its service saw their royalties nearly double (up 95%) after it added audiobooks to its Premium subscription – rather than just having them available for purchase.

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Music + Concerts | Coachella 2024: Will Taylor Swift join Lana Del…

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Music + concerts, music + concerts | coachella 2024: will taylor swift join lana del rey for weekend 2 fans think so.

What started as a few lone Swifties casting early speculation that Taylor Swift would join Lana Del Rey doing her Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival headliner set has become a full-blown internet conspiracy.

Taking to X and TikTok, fans of both songstresses have collected plenty of evidence for why they don’t think they’re crazy. Here’s the rundown of why they think it could happen:

At #Coachella so can’t listen to #TaylorSwift album properly, buuuut I will likely see her tomorrow with Lana Del Rey 👀 — Indigo (@Indigo_winds_) April 19, 2024

manifesting a lana del rey and taylor swift coachella performance tomorrow night 🙏🏻 pic.twitter.com/HEf6aGAVUS — music is my love language (@jjustanothergal) April 19, 2024

1. Taylor Swift just released an album

It’s one of the more low-hanging reasons, but it is true that Swift just put out an album. Perfect timing?

“When does Tortured Poets Department come out?” Tiktok user @callhergabbyyy asked cheekily as she pointed to its April 19 release date. “Anddd when is Lana’s set?”

She went on to speculate that Swift would, in fact, make a showing at Lana’s set.

@callhergabbyyy Taylor Swift x Coachella Weekend ✌🏼 you heard it bere first !! #taylorswift #coachella #torturedpoetsdepartment #tpd #lanadelrey ♬ Mastermind – Taylor Swift

It’s not like Swift necessarily needs the publicity: Spotify’s official X account posted that as of April 19, “THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT became Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day, and Taylor Swift became the most-streamed artist in a single day in Spotify history.”

On April 19th, 2024, THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT became Spotify's most-streamed album in a single day, and Taylor Swift became the most-streamed artist in a single day in Spotify history. pic.twitter.com/g2tzdzdgCC — Spotify (@Spotify) April 19, 2024

Not to say fans aren’t onto something, as Swift is no stranger to surprising her listeners:  “THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT,” marks Swift’s 11th album, and it came with a surprise extra 15 songs, which the singer revealed in a 2 a.m. post on X. Which brings us to our next point.

2. The power of two?

Taylor Swift’s announcement that her album was a double album was full of “twos” which led fans to believe that she was hinting at a Weekend 2 performance.

It’s a 2am surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album. ✌️ I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine… pic.twitter.com/y8pyDK8VTd — Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) April 19, 2024

“We’ve all been seeing all this stuff about twos, two this, two that, two everything,” Tiktok user @riileycarr said. “Taylor Swift will be at Coachella, Weekend 2!”

@riileycarr Will Taylor Swift perform with Lana tomorrow night at Coachella?!? #taylorsversion #taylorswift #coachella #tpd @gabby ♬ original sound – Riley

3. Swift was at Coachella last week

Whether or not it helps or hurt the case for an appearance, Weekend 1 did reveal that Taylor Swift is not, not interested in at least attending the festival.

As a colleague posted, she was spotted in the crowd several times throughout Weekend 1 with boyfriend Travis Kelce.

Sharing one last delulu theory that I am convinced Lana Del Rey is bringing out Taylor Swift tonight at Coachella to perform “Snow on the Beach” and “Fortnight” The only logic I have is I was right that she’d be there last weekend. 🔗: https://t.co/MD6uk8muY0 #Coachella #tsttpd pic.twitter.com/MP7pSAr8Z0 — Carolyn Burt (@CarolynBurt_) April 19, 2024

4. Lana allegedly sound-checked “Snow on the Beach”

Rumors are swirling around that during Del Rey’s Thursday night soundcheck, campers could hear “Snow on the Beach” – a song by Swift, featuring Del Rey.

For the record, we couldn’t find official proof.

@jessicagolich IF TAY TAY SHOWS UP TO PLAY WITH LANA TOMORROW I SIMPLY CANNOT 😱🤯 #lanadelreytaylorswiftcoachella #coachellaweekendtwo #coachellaweekendtwolanadelrey #taylorswiftcoachella #ttpd #swiftok ♬ Snow On The Beach – Taylor Swift

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Thomas Friedman on Iran, Israel and Preventing a ‘Forever War’

“It’s the worst story I’ve ever covered.”

Hosted by Ross Douthat ,  Carlos Lozada and Lydia Polgreen

Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’

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The columnist Thomas L. Friedman joined the hosts of “Matter of Opinion” this week to unpack Israel’s and Iran’s latest attacks, what they mean for Gaza and the implications for the region writ large.

Below is a lightly edited transcript of this episode. To listen to this episode, click the play button below.

Lydia Polgreen: From New York Times Opinion, I’m Lydia Polgreen.

Ross Douthat: I’m Ross Douthat.

Carlos Lozada: I’m Carlos Lozada.

Lydia: And this is “Matter of Opinion.”

Over the past few weeks, Israel and Iran have engaged in a military standoff. Israel struck the Iranian Embassy in Syria, killing several top Iranian military officials. Then last weekend Iran sent hundreds of drones and missiles toward Israel. And finally, early on Friday, Israel retaliated , striking a military base in Iran.

Michelle Cottle is out this week, so to try to unpack what all this means, we asked our colleague Thomas L. Friedman to join us.

This conversation was recorded before the latest attack, so keep that in mind. But we think it provides some very helpful context to what led us to this moment and what could happen next.

Welcome back to “Matter of Opinion,” Tom.

Thomas L. Friedman: Thank you, Lydia. It’s great to be back.

Lydia: So let’s get right into it. How did Iran’s attack on Israel come to be?

Tom: Well, roughly a week before Iran launched its missile attack, Israel killed several very, very senior [Islamic] Revolutionary Guards commanders who were in an adjunct building to the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, meeting with operatives at the same time. And this gentleman was reportedly responsible for really running all the sort of Iranian operations in Lebanon, in Syria.

And so, from the Israeli point of view, he was a very high-value target. I was surprised they did this. It’s not something I thought was very wise. My grandmother used to say, just one war at a time, please. And this really was a provocation, even for the ongoing shadow war between Israel and Iran, which has been ongoing now for years.

This was definitely a step-up. And the Iranians honored the Israelis’ step-up by taking a massive step-up of their own on Saturday by launching some 300 drones, missiles and cruise missiles at Israel from Iran, marking the first time that any Middle East state has attacked Israel since Saddam Hussein did it with Scuds 33 years ago.

And in the context of the Israeli-Iranian conflict, again, tit-for-tat, shadow war, neither has ever done such a thing. I didn’t buy and don’t buy the notion that they were counting on Israel’s air defense system to shoot down basically all 300 with help from allies. That was actually quite a remarkable military feat.

Had one of them gotten through and hit an Israeli school or a government building, this audio program would be about full-scale war in the Middle East right now.

Ross: So your view is that that possibility was built into the Iranian attack? Because both during the attack, honestly, and then immediately afterward, there was this running debate about the extent to which Iran had deliberately telegraphed this move, telegraphed it to Israel, telegraphed it to the other Arab states that cooperated in shooting down the missiles, which to some people seemed to imply that Iran wanted the attack to fail.

But you don’t think that was the case, and you think, therefore, Iran was prepared for really dramatic escalation in response from Israel?

Tom: Yeah, Ross. You know, I say two things. One is, just given the physics of it, no one could count on firing 300 missiles and drones at another country, that basically none would get through. That almost all 300 would be intercepted by a, in effect, multinational force. And No. 2, when it comes to Iran, I always prefer to put an s on the end: Irans.

So maybe the supreme leader had one thing in mind and the [Islamic] Revolutionary Guards had another thing in mind. It’s a notoriously factionalized system, particularly between the Revolutionary Guards, the army and the government. And not everyone is always aligned.

Carlos: Tom, so how much or how little can we discern about Iran’s offensive capabilities and Israel’s defensive capabilities from what we just saw?

Tom: I was trying to imagine when the head of the Iranian Air Force reported back to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, did he breathe a sigh of relief or did he say, “Zero out of 300?”

Lydia: Hmm.

Tom: “ If that’s how bad our offense is, what does that mean for our defense?” Remember, Iran’s air force does not have F-35s. It does not have F-15s. So they have none of the advanced technologies that Israel and its allies have.

And so I think the Iranians are much more worried right now than not. It has been a risk-averse leadership. This is not people who have gone out of their way to bet the farm. And that’s why I was really surprised that in some ways they did, because if just one out of 300 gets through and causes a mass casualty event in Israel, I think Israel — they would have taken the plans out for Iran’s nuclear program. And we’d be in Day 5 of that war right now. So I don’t think the world fully appreciates how close we came. That’s just my gut feeling.

Lydia: What’s going on in Israel? What are the calculations that are happening right now in terms of how to respond? There was in the immediate moment this idea that they must hit back and hit back hard. Now some time has passed. Life seems to be returning roughly to normal in Israel. Where do things stand?

Tom: I think we’re all trying to divine that, Lydia. So several factors are sort of converging here. One is Israel is having the best week of this war since Oct. 7, in terms of global public opinion. People now see at the interstate level what they’re up against, and it’s not inconsiderable. And that’s why you’ve had visits by the German foreign minister, the British, people really expressing solidarity. But within the Israeli government, one of the things that’s troubled me since the war began is that there’s basically no opposition in Israel. Since the beginning of the war, there’s been no opposition.

It’s not like Gantz and Eisenkot who have joined the government from the leading opposition party, I mean they’re — I don’t know — 10 degrees different from Netanyahu, but it’s not like there’s a liberal party arguing something completely different at all. It’s much more nuanced. In other words, Israeli politics still revolves around Bibi Netanyahu, and he’s in everybody’s head.

And as a result of that, there is no loud, significant opposition articulating an alternative strategy, like maybe not retaliating, for either Gaza or now Iran. There’s degrees of caution and separation. And I believe one reason for that is that the army in Israel has often played that role more than the politicians.

What happened is that because the Gaza war is a complete and catastrophic military failure, all the military chiefs know their careers are over. And because of that, we are six months into a war with no defined endgame. And the military normally would be playing that role, but I think because everyone here is traumatized and a little bit compromised in their own way, they’re not playing that role.

Ross: So I think we want to talk about endgame scenarios, but just to push on the Netanyahu thread for a minute: Netanyahu is politically unpopular in Israel right now, in the sense that opinion polls that we can see suggest that he would not be returned as prime minister if elections were held suddenly.

And we’ve had various people — yourself included, our colleague Bret Stephens — arguing that for the sake of Israel’s war effort, Netanyahu should go. If Netanyahu went, in whatever way, shape or form, what would actually follow? Beyond the change in leadership style, who would be in charge, and would there be any shift in strategy or tactics?

Tom: Ross, there certainly would be a change in tone. When Netanyahu came in with the farthest far-right government Israel’s ever had — including real Jewish Proud Boys, I mean, Jewish supremacists — their approach was, you know, “We’re living in a one-state reality. Let’s behave without self-restraint. In fact, let’s try to take the Supreme Court down so we can truly behave without self-restraint.”

So I think the first answer to your question, Ross, would be it’s a government that would not be looking in any way to provoke things. That’s where I would start. But absent what is the resolution on the ground in Gaza, how much of Hamas survives, now this Iran factor — it’s very hard to predict actually how different they would be.

And all I can say about Netanyahu is that he’s compromised. He knows he has to stay in power in order to be able to trade his office for a plea bargain if he is convicted. Therefore, there isn’t a decision he makes in this war that isn’t factored in with his own political needs, which a lot of people would argue would be, keep the war going.

And in fact, look, he didn’t invite this Iran attack, I don’t believe, but it sure works for him politically. I bet if they took a poll today, you’d see his numbers have gone way up.

Carlos: Tom, I want to widen that question just a tiny bit. In your latest column , you wrote that there’s no hope for a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the conflict between Israel and Iran without leadership change, in Israel with Netanyahu but also in Tehran and also in Ramallah with the Palestinian Authority.

And it’s very persuasive. You kind of walk through each case. But what I wanted to ask you is how much of this problem is about the particular leadership that’s in place, versus how much is about the competing interests and forces at play that have shown themselves to be somewhat resistant at times to leadership changes.

Tom: So Carlos, I’ll start at 30,000 feet ——

Carlos: That’s where you live, Tom. That’s great. [Laughter]

Tom: Exactly. That’s where I have to live, because if you’re down on the ground, man, there aren’t enough drugs to keep you going. [Laughter.] So anyone who knows my politics knows that it’s a tension between Walter Mondale and Thomas Hobbes. A lot of people keep saying, “Two-state solution’s a fantasy.”

And I say, “Oh, thank you for telling me! I had no idea that this was hard. Thank you for telling me.” I get it. There’s about a 95 percent chance that this won’t work. But I’ve decided to dedicate my life 100 percent to the 5 percent chance that it will, because the alternative is a forever war. And if you care about Israel, care about Palestinians, that’s the end of both communities. Because they’ll just destroy each other, basically.

And so the hope I base that on, Carlos, is this: Bibi Netanyahu has been in power for 16 years. He has spent 16 years doing everything he could to denigrate the Palestinian Authority. In those 16 years, with kind of a free hand, Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the P.A., has done everything to shift money to relatives and really take advantage of the fact that they couldn’t have an election.

I would just like to do a lab test: What if you had an Israeli leader and a Palestinian leader who actually wanted to try to make this work? Would it work automatically? I have no idea. And we have the whole question of settlements and physical problems on the ground. But I would at least like to run that test of having someone in power in Ramallah and someone in power in Jerusalem who actually wanted to make it work and see how far we can get. And because it’s going to happen incrementally.

Ross: I think one of the questions here, right, is people say, “No one wants a wider war.”

Ross: But there are people who want a wider war, right?

Tom: Definitely.

Ross: Who are they right now, and what are they thinking?

Tom: So, Ross, one is Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who is hiding somewhere in Gaza.

Ross: Right, he needs a wider war.

Tom: He needs a wider war, because he’s out to destroy Israel. The thing people need to remember about Sinwar is, Sinwar actually doesn’t know the Arabs very well, which is why I think he was surprised by some of them not joining in. But he knows Israelis really well. In fact, he learned his Israeli studies in prison. He learned all his Hebrew in prison. And he spent years observing Israel and all its weaknesses, and he put them all into play in this war. And he wants Israel wiped out. So he’s certainly one of them.

I always go back when I think about Iran, Ross, to remember what Ayatollah Khomeini said when he came to Tehran from Paris in 1979 and took over, basically, Iran from the shah. He said: We didn’t make this revolution to lower the price of watermelons. This is a truly ideological movement with an agenda that it is ready to prioritize over advancing the well-being of Iranians.

And we’ve seen that now since 1979. And so you have to take these people very seriously. They want to destroy Israel out of conviction and ambition. Whether they think they can actually do it is a whole other question, but they’re not playing around.

Lydia: So the Iranians — what are the Palestinians to them? Are they just an instrument trying to humiliate Israel? Because there’s not a natural alliance, as you said, so how is Iran positioned vis-à-vis the Palestinians here?

Tom: So Iran is not popular among the West Bank. Remember a big part of the Palestinian community are Christians — not a majority, but they have a significant Christian minority. In the P.A., Iran is not popular. Iran is extremely adept at cultivating underground networks. And so Palestinians are to them the same as Houthis are to them, the same as Hezbollah is to them, the same as Shia militias in Iraq are to them. They’re instruments, and they are how Iran projects power.

And by basically enabling these militias with resources and money to either take over these countries or eat away at the systems there, so you can’t get a majority against them. Lebanon hasn’t been able to elect a president now for a couple of years because Iran can’t necessarily, within the Lebanese system, get the man it wants, but it can make sure that no one else can get the person they want that would be hostile to Iran.

And Hamas, — one has to remember, Hamas launched this war because there was a big political struggle going on inside Hamas between more moderate forces led by Haniyeh and Sinwar and because Hamas was in a giant rivalry with Fatah in the West Bank and Fatah seemed to be lining up with Israel and Saudi Arabia to do a giant normalization deal. So take a step back from all the sort of Hamas ideology charter — this was also very much local politics at work.

Ross: So I just want to push you to make a specific prediction — sorry — [Laughter] about what the Israelis are going to do. Because in the narrative, your narrative of the Iranian desire for a wider war, it seems like what constrains Iranian leadership is fear. That they would happily go to war with Israel ——

Ross: —— tomorrow if they thought they could win it. So if you are in the Israeli cabinet right now, are you thinking, “We must strike back to restore deterrence and maintain fear”? Or are you thinking, “Iran failed sufficiently that they will be deterred from trying this again”? What are you thinking, and what are they going to do?

Tom: What are they going to do? I don’t know, Ross. I’ll just say what I’ve been thinking from Day 1 of the war: that Israel needs to ask itself what its worst enemies want it to do and do the opposite. And it’s rooted in a larger framework that I have, which is that I can write the history of this conflict for you long. I wrote a whole book, “[From] Beirut to Jerusalem,” about it. Or I can write history really short, and it fits on a business card: war, timeout, war, timeout, war, timeout, war, timeout, war, timeout, war, timeout, going back to 1929, if not earlier. And the difference between the two sides is what each did in the timeout. Israel built one of the strongest economies in the world. Hamas dug tunnels and nursed a grievance. And my view is that the Israeli No. 1 objective should always be to get to the timeout whenever they can, as much as they can.

Now maybe in this situation, it’s unavoidable. They just can’t. That’s what they would argue. I’m not sure that’s the case. But Israel wins in the timeouts, and it loses in times of war, especially where we are now historically, politically and technologically in a social wired network world where when you lose on TikTok now, you don’t just lose Muslim Americans in Michigan. You lose a whole generation. And I think Israel is in real danger of losing a whole generation right now.

Carlos: I wonder if we could maybe spend some of our remaining time talking about what the next timeout might look like if we’re able to get there. Back in January, which feels so long ago, you wrote a column saying that Oct. 7 had propelled a fundamental rethinking of the Middle East inside the Biden administration. You outlined what you thought was an emerging Biden doctrine for the region. Given how the conflict has evolved since then, how is the administration thinking about the region, broadly speaking, now? Is there a coherent doctrine that you see still at work or in development here?

Tom: Carlos, I’d just say before I answer, I’ve been doing this my entire adult life. I’ve been following the Middle East since I was 15. I’m now 70. This is the absolutely worst moment I ever remember and the most worrisome for the whole region spinning out of control.

I would say the administration has a broad doctrine, which is Israel should find a way to finish the operation of dismantling Hamas in a way that spares as many innocent Gazan civilians as possible. It should then work with the P.A., with the support of countries like the U.A.E. or Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, when they are of sufficient capacity and strength. The P.A. plus allied countries — Jordan, Egypt, U.A.E., Saudi Arabia — should then be the ones to govern Gaza, maybe even with some American logistical help.

And then Israel should provide some political horizon for the Palestinians, so Israel can then normalize with Saudi Arabia. And we then find ourselves with a broad inclusion network in the region, stretching from Egypt through Gaza, the Arabian Gulf countries, and we’re in a whole new Middle East.

That’s the hope. It’s still not impossible, I would say, but it takes me back, Carlos, to, again, what I said early on after the war, which is what was going on in the world on Oct. 6? On Oct. 6, Ukraine was trying to join the West, and Israel was trying to join the Arab East. Ukraine was trying to get into the European Union, and Israel was trying to normalize with Saudi Arabia.

This was a pivotal 1989 moment. And Russia understood the first and stopped it, and Hamas and Iran understood the second and stopped it. Because if these two events had happened — if the first had happened, it would be the biggest change in Europe since East Germany joined West Germany. We would be nine-tenths to a Europe whole and free. In the Middle East, it would be the biggest expansion of the Inclusion Network since Camp David, and it would have opened up the whole Muslim world to Israel. So we were at a pivotal — we still are at a pivotal moment that will actually define the post-post-Cold War world in both Europe and the Middle East if we take these two theaters together.

It may not feel like it, but this is 1989. This is a pivotal moment that is going to define the post-post-Cold War world. And that’s why I feel strongly about both aid for Ukraine and making sure that the Palestinian Authority, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan come out of this the right way.

Lydia: But one big stumbling block to that, and you didn’t mention when you talked about who wanted a widening war, but it’s clear that Netanyahu wants this war to continue ——

Lydia: —— and needs this war to continue.

Lydia: Does the potential widening of the war weaken or strengthen him? And how do we contend with that as a factor overall? I mean, Biden has been trying very hard to exercise influence, but it’s hard to exercise influence on someone who feels cornered and running for their life.

Tom: Yeah. You know, Lydia it’s been a problem from Day 1, and it’s why I’ve focused on him so much. He’s not on the level as a leader right now in terms of his decision making. That said, he’s also not alone. He has to balance his far-right coalition partners with Benny Gantz, with the army and with the public.

So it’s not like he can just keep people at war forever. He’s under huge pressure from hostage families. But he can drag things out at the margins, more and less. He can extend this thing if he wants, but I don’t think it’s indefinite.

Joe Biden — it seems like an eternity ago, but a couple of weeks ago after the tragic killing of José Andrés’s team, Biden basically called [Netanyahu] up and said: Here’s what you’re going to do, and if you don’t do it, you’re basically on your own.

And that got his attention because Israeli prime ministers depend on an American president to deal with their internal politics. They need to be able to go back to the cabinet and say, “I would never do that. But this S.O.B. Biden, he broke my arm! He broke — he broke my arm! I would never do this, but the Americans made me do it.”

And so we need to always be aware of that role that we play. Some would say Biden didn’t play it hard enough early enough. I think it’s a tricky question because you also don’t want to give Hamas a pass and think that, OK, now the Americans have got Bibi’s hands tied behind his back because then Hamas will take advantage of it. So navigating this war is just hell on wheels.

Ross: But so just to clarify, from the point of view of the Israelis who do not have Netanyahu’s specific political incentives but share his perspective, which, as you’re arguing, is most of the key players ——

Ross: —— what’s the difference between the endgame you just sketched or the timeout you just sketched, which presumably is the one the Biden administration is seeking ——

Ross: —— and what they think? Like, if Netanyahu’s cabinet gets what they want in the war in the next six months, what does their view of the timeout look like?

Tom: Ross, I’m going to tell you the craziest thing, one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen covering international relations. I don’t know the answer, because no one in Israel has said — even the opposition has not said — what is the endgame in Gaza. And we are six months into this war, and, and I’m not being cute or anything. I, I have no idea.

It just doesn’t make sense to me, and worse, I think it’s just incredibly reckless. One can only divine by their actions, Ross, that their idea is to finish off Hamas in Rafah if they can, and I think that’s a dubious proposition. I wrote early on , the four most dangerous words in the Middle East are “once and for all.” Nothing ever ends once and for all there.

And then the plan, Ross, seems to be to pull largely out of Gaza, except for a perimeter and the road bisecting it and use those two sort of positions to go in and out at will.

But I was there a few weeks ago with General Carrillo, our Centcom commander. We were actually at the Erez crossing and being briefed by an Israeli colonel. And he said, “We’re basically all out of northern Gaza.” I said, “What? What?” He said, “We’ve left northern Gaza.” I said, “Well, who’s governing northern Gaza?” Now, a lot of the population has been depopulated, but he didn’t have an answer.

And I immediately — and I wrote a column about this — had a flashback to being in Iraq three weeks after the war in Umm Qasr and saying, “Where are the Americans? Where are the British?” And no one was there because they had left a completely ungoverned space.

So either you’re going to have a Somalia, where Israel goes in and out, or Hamas coming back. Or you’re going to get a new Israeli government that invites the P.A. in. But right now, no one is talking that way.

And so we’re six months into this war, and I can’t answer your most basic question — not just because Netanyahu hasn’t answered it, because Gantz and Eisenkot, the opposition, haven’t answered it, and the opposition outside the government haven’t offered a kind of third way. And that gets to the deformities of the Israeli political system right now — that there is no opposition.

Lydia: Tom, thank you so much for coming to spend some time with us today.

Carlos: Thank you so much, Tom.

Tom: I feel like it’s wonderful to be with my great colleagues. I wish I had better answers. I don’t. It’s the worst story I’ve ever covered.

Lydia: That’s saying something.

Tom: Great to be with you guys. Anytime.

Ross: Thanks Tom.

Mentioned in this episode:

“ How to Be Pro-Palestinian, Pro-Israeli and Pro-Iranian ” by Thomas L. Friedman

“ Iran Just Made a Big Mistake. Israel Shouldn’t Follow. ” by Thomas L. Friedman

“ A Biden Doctrine for the Middle East Is Forming. And It’s Big. ” by Thomas L. Friedman

“ Netanyahu Must Go ” by Bret Stephens

Thoughts? Email us at [email protected] .

Follow our hosts on X: Michelle Cottle ( @mcottle ), Ross Douthat ( @DouthatNYT ) and Carlos Lozada ( @CarlosNYT ).

“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Derek Arthur. It is edited by Jordana Hochman. Mixing by Sonia Herrero and Pat McCusker. Original music by Isaac Jones, Efim Shapiro, Carole Sabouraud, Sonia Herrero and Pat McCusker. Our fact-checking team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009. He is the author, most recently, of “The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery.” @ DouthatNYT • Facebook

Carlos Lozada is an Opinion columnist and a co-host of the weekly “Matter of Opinion” podcast for The Times, based in Washington, D.C. He is the author, most recently, of “ The Washington Book : How to Read Politics and Politicians.”  @ CarlosNYT

Lydia Polgreen is an Opinion columnist and a co-host of the “ Matter of Opinion ” podcast for The Times.