Pretty proud of the
@Spotify
team for this one – a generative, expressive and realistic AI DJ that delivers a personalized lineup of music and commentary to each user, for all those times you don’t know exactly what you want to hear. Hope you like it! 🎧
This is maybe my favorite Spotify launch the last few years. It’s been a looong time in the making. I’m a huge book fan and I think that audiobooks in an access model can do to reading what the access model did to music and make a lot more people - that may not consider
If you want to learn some secrets about the Spotify product, our history, some of our near misses, and generally what it’s like to be on a journey like this - to live and die by the MAU curve - here is a presentation I gave for students at MIT recently.
☠️~When Spotify almost died~☠️
How Spotify nearly didn’t make it’s 5th birthday as the world around us suddenly changed. Interviews with top analyst
#MaryMeeker
& Spotify insiders. And why it’s better to be lower on a tall 🏔than higher on a small one🧗♂️
Do you dream of a world where some of the top podcasts would be spoken in your native language? Well, that’s now possible. We’re excited to pilot Voice Translation, a groundbreaking feature powered by AI that translates podcasts into additional languages—all in the podcaster’s
While most people now start to understand what AI can do I find that most people (often even in tech) still don't have any real understanding of how it actually does these things. This means that they tend to either overestimate - or underestimate - what it can really do when
I made a podcast about Spotify's Product Story. In 1st 2 episodes I interview Spotify insiders like
@eldsjal
and
@strigeus
that made it happen, early music and tech movers like
@larsulrich
and
@sparker
and industry analysts like
@ballmatthew
🙏🏻
Over the years a lot of people asked me about the product foundation story and the 🎢 ride that led to the Spotify you know today. If you are in tech and want to get behind the scenes - this is it! 👏👏👏 to
@gustavs
for making this.
Big day for podcasters on
@Spotify
!Huge shoutout to all the amazing teams at Spotify who have worked hard to bring all of this new functionality to our Podcast creators and consumers 🙌🏻
1/ Today, we’re thrilled to be opening up Video Podcasting (and a bunch of awesome new video features!) to all podcasters in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada on
@Spotify
through
@Anchor
.
Exciting news! Our integration with Patreon is live for users globally. This partnership underscores our commitment to give creators more power and choice, and provide listeners with access to all the content they love.
🎧What’s next in audio for Spotify?🤔 This is the season finale of the show, and in this episode we don’t know what the lessons will be yet (they may turn out to be painful and expensive..😬) but we share what we’re betting on based on our past learnings.
🏆Winning bet becomes losing bet🤦🏼♂️ This ep is esp geared twd CEOs/CTOs that have to kill their darlings.Listen to
@uhoelzle
and insiders as we journey from proprietary tech on a few servers in a cupboard, to partnering with Google and “moving up the stack”
👩🎶 “Human vs Machine” 🤖🎼
Will AI truly replace us? 👀 Listen to ML legend
@AndrewYNg
and Spotify insiders like
@TonyJebara
and others on what it _really_ means to develop “AI first” products, how we invented “Algotorial” and how RL applies to music.
Audiobooks in Premium are now live in the US 🎧📚 🚀
Sharing a few of my favorites to celebrate. What are yours?
Book I’ve read the most times:
Pippi Longstocking 😂
Book that had big impact on me:
Many. But, long ago - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Who would
Finally able to get my fix of the Stratechery and Dithering paid podcasts by
@benthompson
on Spotify 😎 To listen on Spotify, just sign in with your Stratechery account, link it to Spotify and the content will be unlocked in Spotify
If you feel like you still don’t have a handle on the fundamentals of AI/LLMs, you might be interested in a talk
@GustavS
recently gave to our team. He dives into that how these systems work is actually much simpler than many of us think
Full link:
🚨Hey! I made a podcast about Spotify's Product Story.🚨 In 1st 2 episodes I interview Spotify insiders like
@eldsjal
and
@strigeus
that made it happen, early music and tech movers like
@larsulrich
and
@sparker
and industry analysts like
@ballmatthew
🙏🏻
Check out the latest episode of “Spotify: A Product Story,” where our Chief R&D Officer
@GustavS
explores Spotify’s bet on podcasts, the shift to audio-first, and four hard-won lessons in product strategy.
Absolutely loved this interview with legend and friend
@hbarra
. He’s seen so much of the tech era and has a ton of perspective and insight. And
@benthompson
is one of very few interviewers who understands the space and history deeply enough to ask all the really interesting -
Here's my conversation with Gustav Söderström (
@GustavS
), head of research and development at
@Spotify
, about machine learning & recommender systems in the world of music and podcasting. Extra meta-points if you listen to this podcast on Spotify.
🔊 Hardware is hard 😓 On Spotify’s multi-year endeavor deep into the HW stack of the speaker world - creating a new media streaming protocol for the industry - in order to create a great experience. Interviews with
@Sonos
founder Tom Cullen & Spotifyers
It’s been a whole year since we launched AI DJ! I hope you’ve liked it as much as I have. If you want a little backstory of how it came to be, check out the latest episode of Spotify: A Product Story from
@GustavS
and team. 🔈
#ML
is in everyone's lives when it comes to
#music
.
@GustavS
, Chief R&D Officer of
@Spotify
, joins the podcast to share how they personalize playlists for their 405+ million users.
🛠 When to build vs buy 💰 - and when to give it away! 💸 Hear the story of Backstage - Spotify’s “platform of platforms” and our decision to open source it. Interviews with
@prefectIO
founder
@jlowin
and Spotify insiders.
If you drive a Tesla - you’ll probably notice a pretty major update to Spotify today. Here’s a look at what you can expect.🏎️
Let me know what you think!
Spent some time talking through the implications of AI with
@mignano
recently. Got through a bunch of interesting topics, including the future of product development and design, recommendations and personalization, music and media creation and work - as well as risks and
🔥 MAJOR CAREER ANNOUNCEMENT!
I wanted to:
- solve problems at massive scale,
- do open source full time,
- have it be related to a hobby,
- work with people I enjoy and admire.
Excited to start my new job at...
I’ve had the great fortune of spending a bunch of time with
@hbarra
❤️ He has one of the most unique product development experiences in tech having done large scale HW & SW across both US & China. This interview with
@HarryStebbings
is a must listen!
Also in this episode, the story of how Spotify got an early start in Machine Learning thanks to
@fulhack
, the acquisitions of Tunigo (founded by
@nickmanic
) and The Echo Nest (founded by
@bwhitman
and
@tjehan
) and how these led to the system we have today.
In this a16z podcast,
@smc90
and I chat with Spotify's Chief Product and R&D officer,
@GustavS
, about the future of audio, Original Shows, and more. Have a listen!
🚨 New Episode Out Today! 🚨
This week on how we went from a popular free desktop app - but that nobody paid for - to a mobile app that people actually paid real money for - even though they already had all their pirated music on their phone for free...
1/ Today, we’re thrilled to be launching
@Spotify
Paid Subscriptions, enabling creators to stand up their own podcast subscription businesses on
@anchor
.
This marks a new era for podcast monetization through a platform that’s purpose built for creators.
Through 20Product I have had the chance to sit down with the best product minds in the world.
@GustavS
is one of the all time greats
@Spotify
and this one is not to be missed tomorrow. 🔥 👇
Was really great spending time with
@mignano
on-air! 🎙️ Got pretty deep into what product development in an AI world means and how we think about it at Spotify. But also touched on a few more philosophical questions around AI and it’s risks and benefits which I rarely get to talk
"The AI is the product."
Always a pleasure speaking with
@Spotify
's co-president/CPO/CTO,
@GustavS
, who delivered a perfect lesson on the future of AI in this long form conversation. I've had the pleasure of knowing and learning from Gustav for many years, yet even I picked a
Fascinating and worthwhile read for any engineer. Seems root cause _may_ be FAA forcing SW deadlines. FAA’s response? Forcing new SW to be shipped “no later than April!” 🤔
Today we interviewed
@GustavS
,
@Spotify
Chief R&D Officer. Gustav is a pioneer in the transformation of how people listen and engage with music. We discuss AI, Machine Learning, and music and our understanding of the universe, enjoy!
@KTHuniversity
What would the world look like if someone like
@jacindaardern
could’ve been the 46th POTUS... Just so incredibly impressed with her (and jealous of the Kiwis). This is what modern, intelligent, available and humble leadership looks like... ?
Tack
@ChSturmark
för en mycket rolig konversation på Fri Tanke-podden om hur AI ger filosofin nya angreppsmetoder för att fundera på de lite större frågorna runt vad intelligens, medvetande och meningen med mänskligheten egentligen är 👀🤔
Rest In Peace Daniel Dennet. Daniel was one of our best thinkers on the philosophy of mind and he brought a lot of exciting ideas and concepts into the world, and thus a lot of joy into my life.
So great to interview you
@uhoelzle
. Having the wisdom of the entire journey from the first Google servers in Susan's garage to Google Cloud Platform today - all in one single person - is such a privilege. Very grateful to get some of that wisdom and insight 🙏🏻
One of the hardest insights to make is when the thing that made you very successful has outlived its time and needs to go. Featuring GCP (in a good way😎).
Enjoyed chatting about Spotify’s journey into Personalization, Machine Learning and Reinforcement Learning with
@AndrewYNg
and
@GustavS
our chief R+D officer. Check it out on Spotify: A Product Story!
“Hope is not an investment strategy.”
@Spotify
’s product story has never been told before.
On the latest episode, I joined CPO/CTO
@GustavS
to discuss internal products, successful open-source models, and, of course, the decision to release Backstage.
My new show “Rock This with Allison Hagendorf” is LIVE NOW, exclusively on
@spotify
. This is YOUR show for all things Rock and Alternative! 🤘🏻❤️✊🏻 Episode 1 featuring
@yungblud
🖤 is up now. Follow and check it out here:
#RockThis
#yungblud
#spotify
Got data and wonder if there's a formula describing it? Try our new physics-inspired AI Feynman algorithm, published today. It automates what took Kepler 4 years: