How Spotify builds products

Product development isn’t easy. In fact, most product development efforts fail, and the most common reason for failure is building the wrong product.

Spotify is a Swedish lean startup with an awesome track record of product delivery. The products are designed to be easy, personal, and fun. Even Metallica, long known as die-hard opponents to music streaming services, now say that Spotify is “by far the best streaming service” and are “stunned by the ease of it”.

Here’s the paradox though: Successful companies like Spotify only want to deliver products that people love. But they don’t know if people love it until they’ve delivered it. So how do they do it?

Check out the article “How Spotify Builds Products

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11 responses on “How Spotify builds products

  1. Where do the ideas come from and how do you decide, what enters the pipeline? Do you use any methodology like Design Thinking or similar for ideation?

    Thank you for sharing, very useful to see practical examples.

    Stefan

  2. While the article is well written, the model described does seem a bit obvious and generic. I think most successful companies develop products in this fashion.

    What would be interesting is to see more around Spotify’s process and insight into larger changes, for example, your recent choice of a HTML vs. an installable client.

    Another interesting insight would be more around how you personally see A/B testing vs. other means of innovation. Many times, A/B testing is somewhat reactionary in that it can only react and measure smaller changes and therefore has a deficit in its pro-statistical thinking. Innovation sometimes, they claim, need to be freed from these shackles and not necessarily measured. How people think and feel about a product may not be immediately measurable, and the reaction may come long after the event.

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