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Spotify: A Product Story

Spotify: A Product Story

By Spotify

A miniseries about product strategy, offering on a weekly basis, a glimpse into the decisions that have guided Spotify’s product evolution. Hosted by Gustav Söderström, Spotify's Chief R&D Officer, each episode tells the story of a pivotal product development or business decision through candid conversations with a diverse cast of voices from across the industry.
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07: Spotify’s podcast bet

Spotify: A Product StoryApr 21, 2021

00:00
46:44
10: In pursuit of the perfect session - a DJ just for you

10: In pursuit of the perfect session - a DJ just for you

We’re back! And today we dig into Spotify’s AI DJ. Since its inception, radio provided a music format that was convenient and simple, but far from personal. Spotify’s solution? AI DJ, a bespoke experience that provides listeners with the content they want through generative AI technology.

After years of experimentation, we created a product that captures the fun and usefulness of a radio DJ, but builds on it to make it a personalized experience meant just for you. From tackling the gap between “mind free” listening and “mind busy” listening, to relentless weekly user testing, the path to the AI DJ took many twists and turns before it landed in the lap of listeners. When the concept of the product was ready, we just had one more question: Who would become the first-ever “Voice of Spotify?” Follow along and hear the full story as we dive into AI DJ’s journey, from conception to launch.

This episode features interviews with Ziad Sultan (Spotify’s VP of Personalization), Xavier “X” Jernigan (Spotify’s head of cultural partnerships and the voice of AI DJ), Emily Galloway (Spotify’s Head of Personalization Design).

Feb 21, 202455:15
Explained: The conspiracy to make AI seem harder than it is! by Gustav Söderström

Explained: The conspiracy to make AI seem harder than it is! by Gustav Söderström

2023 may be a year that people still speak about 100 years from now, the year computers passed the Turing test! You know what these things can do, but do you actually understand how they can do it? How is it that we have services like Chat GPT that can write entire novels, and services like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney that can create amazing images or even music from just a text description or even white noise?

Straight from the halls of Spotify, this is an educational talk from an internal executive offsite that we’re sharing with the world. The premise of this talk is that AI is made to seem harder to understand than it actually is, and that after this presentation, you will feel like you understand how all of what’s now happening is possible - even if you don't work in tech and you don’t know a lot of math.

00:00:00-Intro

00:04:01-What is an LLM?

00:20:09-What about Creativity?

00:24:00-How do you steer it?

00:34:26-Why did no one see it coming?

00:39:00-Everything is a vector!

00:57:44-What is a neural network?

1:05:53-Intelligence is compression!

1:15:12-Diffusion Models - Generating Images, video and music

1:21:10-Conditioning on text

Sources used to build the talk:

There are great resources available, for anyone interested to dig deeper

Jul 31, 202301:30:41
09: Building the future of audio
May 05, 202137:27
08: When to build vs buy - and when to open source
Apr 28, 202134:40
07: Spotify’s podcast bet
Apr 21, 202146:44
06: Hardware is hard
Apr 14, 202138:14
05: When your winning bet becomes your losing bet
Apr 07, 202147:41
04: Human vs Machine
Mar 31, 202148:39
03: This party is going to end
Mar 24, 202153:52
02: How do you charge for nothing?
Mar 17, 202132:52
01: How do you steal from a pirate?
Mar 11, 202136:52
00: The most epic battle in music history
Mar 11, 202140:03
Introducing Spotify: A Product Story

Introducing Spotify: A Product Story

Product lessons from Spotify's past and future, hosted by Chief R&D Officer Gustav Söderström.

Mar 09, 202103:47