Spotify is Optimized for Long-Term Retention Over Immediate Click-Through

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Spotify optimizes for long-term retention by focusing on impression and how much users listen weeks later. This approach differs from the traditional method of clicking to stream. They found that the most clickable item in the moment does not necessarily create the most retention. Sometimes, they show recommendations with lower likelihood of click-through but longer listening. For example, instead of showing the top played songs, they might recommend a new show or series. Spotify's focus on long-term retention is driven by the fact that over 90% of their revenue comes from subscriptions.

Gustav Söderström has worked at Spotify for a long time; his first big project was leading the launch of its mobile app back in 2009. That makes him the perfect company leader to talk to about Spotify’s recent redesign, which introduces a visual, TikTok-like feed for discovering new content on the app’s homepage. As his boss CEO Daniel Ek put it last week, it’s “the biggest change Spotify has undergone since we introduced mobile.”

With the title of co-president and chief product and technology officer, Söderström is responsible for not only how Spotify looks and feels but also all the AI work happening behind the scenes to power its increasingly important recommendations. According to Söderström, it turns out that improving those recommendations is actually at the heart of the big redesign. “I think companies that don’t have an efficient user interface for a machine learning world are not going to be able to leverage machine learning,” he told Alex Heath on the newest episode of Decoder.

Links:

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Transcript:

https://www.theverge.com/e/23402123

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

It was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.