Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
Gustav Sorum he's the chief research and
development officer Spotify leading
their product design data technology and
engineering teams as I've said before in
my research and in life in general I
love music listening to it and creating
it and using technology especially
personalization through machine learning
to enrich the music discovery and
listening experience that is what
Spotify has been doing for years
continually innovating defining how we
experience music as a society in the
digital age that's what Gustav and I
talk about among many other topics
including our shared appreciation of the
movie true romance in my view one of the
great movies of all time this is the
artificial intelligence podcast if you
enjoy it subscribe on YouTube give it
five stars on iTunes support on patreon
or simply connect with me on twitter at
lux Friedman spelled Fri D ma n and now
here's my conversation with Gustav Soros
from Spotify has over 50 million songs
in its catalogue so let me ask the
all-important question I feel like
you're the right person to ask what is
the definitive greatest song of all time
it varies for me personally she can't
speak definitively for everyone
I wouldn't believe very much in machine
learning if I did right because everyone
had the same taste so for you what is
you have to pick what is the song
alright so it's it's pretty easy for me
there is this song called you're so cool
Hans Zimmer soundtrack to true romance
it was a movie that made a big
impression on me and it's kind of been
following me through my life actually
had it play at my wedding I start with
the organist and help them play it on an
organ which was a pretty pretty
interesting experience that is probably
my I would say top 3 movie of all time
yeah it's just an incredible yeah and
then it came out during my formative
years and
as I've discovered in music you shape
your music taste during those years so
it definitely affected me quite a bit
did it affect you in any other kind of
way well the movie itself affected me
back then it was a big part of culture I
didn't really adopt any characters from
the movie about it it was a it was a
great story of love fantastic actors and
and you know really I didn't even know
who Hans Zimmer was at a time but
fantastic music and so um that song has
followed me and the movie actually
follow me throughout my life that was a
Quentin Tarantino actually I think
director director produced that her so
it's not stairway to heaven or Bohemian
Rhapsody so those are those are great
they're not my personal favorites but uh
but they're I realized that people have
different tastes and that's it's a big
part of what we do well for me I have to
stick with stairway to heaven so 35,000
years ago I looked this up on Wikipedia
flute like instruments started being
used in caves as part of hunting rituals
then primitive cultural gatherings
things like that this is the birth of
music since then we had a few folks
Beethoven Elvis Beatles Justin Bieber
of course Drake so in your view let's
start like high level philosophical what
is the purpose of music on this planet
of ours I think music has many different
purposes I think there's there's
certainly a big purpose which is the
same as multiple attainment which is
ESCA pisum and to be able to live in
some sort of other mental state for a
while
but I also think you have the the
opposite of escaping which is to help
you focus on something you are actually
doing and so I think people use music as
a tool to to tune the brain to the
activities that they are actually doing
and it's kind of like in one sense maybe
it's the rawest signal if you if you
think about the brain that's known that
works it's maybe the most efficient hack
we can do to actually actively tune it
into some state that you want to be you
can do it in other ways you can tell
stories to put people in a certain mood
but music is probably very F
to get to a certain mood very fast and
you know there's uh there's a social
component historically to music where
people listen to music together I was
just thinking about this that to me you
mentioned machine learning but to me
personally music is a really private
thing I'm speaking for myself I listen
to music like almost nobody knows the
kind of things I have in my library
except people who are really close to me
and they really only know a certain
percentage there's like some weird stuff
that I'm almost probably embarrassed but
by right it's called to give the
pleasure everyone I said the guilty
pleasures yet hopefully they're not too
bad but it's just the ice for me it's
personal do you think of music is
something that's social or as something
that's personal this is a very so I
think it's the same it's the same answer
that you use it for for both we we've
thought a lot about this during these 10
years at Spotify obviously in one sense
as you said music is incredibly social
you go to concerts and so forth on the
other hand it is your your escape and
everyone has these things are very
personal to them so what we've found is
that when it comes to to most people
claim that they have a friend or two
that they are heavily inspired by and
that they listen to so I actually think
music is very social but in a smaller
group setting it's in it's an intimate
form of of it's an intimate relationship
it's not something that you necessarily
share broadly now at concerts you can
argue you do but then you've gathered a
lot of people that you have something in
common with I think this broadcast
sharing on music it's something we tried
on social networks and so forth but it
turns out that people aren't super
interested in is what their friends
listen to they're interested in
understanding if they have something in
common crabs with a friend but not you
know not just as information right that
that that's really interesting
that was just
thinking about this morning listening to
Spotify I really have a pretty intimate
relationship was modified with my
playlists right I've had them for many
years now and they've grown with me
together there's there's an intimate
relationship you have with a library of
music you've developed and we'll talk
about different ways to play with that
can you do the impossible task and try
to give a history of music listening
from your perspective from before the
Internet and after the Internet and just
kind of everything leading up to
streaming Spotify I'll try it it could
be a 100 year podcast yeah I'll try to
do a brief version there are some things
that that I think are very interesting
during the history of music which is
that before recorded music you to be
able to enjoy music you actually had to
be where the music was produced because
he couldn't he couldn't record it and
time-shifted write creation and
consumption had to happen at the same
time basically concerts and so you
either had to get to the nearest village
to listen to music and while that was
cumbersome and it severely limited the
distribution of music it also had some
different qualities which was that the
Creator could always interact with the
audience
it was always live and also there was no
time cap on the music so I think it's
not a coincident that these early
classical works they're much longer than
the three minutes the three minutes came
in as a restriction of the first wax
disc that could only contain a three
minute singsong on one side right so
actually the recorded music severely
limited there or could constraint I
won't say limit I mean constraints often
good but it put very hard constraints on
the music format so you kind of said
like instead of doing these this opus
like many tens of minutes or something
now you get three and a half minutes
because then you're out of wax on this
disc but in return you get in amazing
distribution you reach will widen right
just on that point real quick without
the mass scale distribution there's a
scarcity component where you kind of
look forward
what we had that it's like the Netflix
versus HBO Game of Thrones you like wait
for the event because you can't really
listen to it see you're like look
forward to it and then it's you derive
perhaps more pleasure because it's more
rare for you to listen to particular
piece you think there's value to that
scarcity yeah I think that that is
definitely a thing and there's always
this component of if you have something
in infinite amount so will you value it
as much probably not humanity is always
seeking some is relative so you're
always seeking something you didn't have
and when you have it you don't
appreciate as much I think that's
probably true but I think that's why
concerts exist so you can actually have
both but I think net if you couldn't
listen to music in your car driving that
that'd be worse that cost will be bigger
than the benefit of of the anticipation
I think that you would have so yep it
started with live concerts then it's
being able to you know the the
phonograph invented right you start to
be able to record music exactly so then
then you got this massive distribution
that that made it possible to create two
things I think first of all cultural
phenomenons they probably need
distribution to be able to happen but it
also opened access to you know for a new
kind of artists so you started to have
these phenomenons like Beatles inhale
this and so forth that would really a
function of distribution I think
obviously of talent and innovation but
there was also taking a component and of
course the next big innovation that come
along was was radio broadcast radio and
I think radio is interesting because it
started not as a music medium and
started us as an information medium for
for news and then radio need to define
something to fill the time wid so that
they could honestly play more ads and
make more money and music was free so so
then you had this massive distribution
we could program to people I think those
things that ecosystem is what created
the ability for for for hits but it was
also very broadcast medium so you would
tend to get these massive massive hits
but maybe not such a lot
tail in terms of choice of everybody
listening to the same stuff yeah and as
you said I think there are some social
benefits to that yeah I think for
example there is there's a high
statistical chance that if I talk about
the latest episode of Game of Thrones we
have something to talk about yeah just
statistically in the age of individual
choice maybe some of that goes away so I
I do see the value of like you know
shared cultural components but I also
obviously love personalization and so
let's catch us up to the Internet
so maybe Napster well first of all
there's like mp3's exact tape CDs there
was a digitalization of music with a CD
really it was physical distribution but
the music became did you don't yeah and
so they were files but basically boxed
software and use the software analogy
and then you could start downloading
these files and I think there are two
interesting things that happen back to
music used to be longer before it was
constrained by the distribution medium I
don't think that was a coincidence and
then really the only music genre to have
developed mostly after music was a file
again on the Internet is EDM and EDM is
often much longer than the traditional
music I think I think it's interesting
to think about the fact that music is no
longer constrained in minutes per song
or something it's it's a it's a legacy
of our own distribution technology and
you see some of this new music that that
breaks the format not so much as I would
have expected actually by now but but it
still happens so first of all I don't
really know what EDM is electronic dance
music yeah right you could say Avicii
was one of the biggest in this genre so
the main constraint is of time something
like three four or five minute songs
songs there were eight minutes ten
minutes and so forth because the you
know it started as a digital product
that you downloaded so you didn't have
this this constraint anymore so I think
it's something really interesting that I
don't think has fully happened yet we're
kind of jumping ahead a little bit to
where we are but I think there's there's
tons of formal innovation in music that
should happen now
that couldn't happen when you needed to
really adhere to the distribution
constraints if you didn't adhere to that
you will get no distribution so so jerk
for example
Icelandic artist she made a full I pad
app as an album that's very expensive
you know even though the App Store has
great distribution she gets nowhere near
the distribution versus staying within
the 3-minute format so I think now that
music is fully digital inside these
streaming services there is there is the
opportunity to change the format again
and allow creators to be much more
creative without limiting their their
distribution ability that's interesting
that you're right it's surprising we
don't see that taking advantage more
often it's almost like the constraints
of the distribution from the 50s and 60s
have molded the culture to where we want
the five three to five minutes on that
anything else not just so we want the
song as consumers and as artists like I
cuz I write a lot of music and I never
even thought about writing something
longer than 10 minutes that's it's
really interesting that those
constraints because all your training
data has been three minutes right it's
right okay so yes digitization of data
later than mp3s
yeah so I think you had this file then
that was distributed physically but then
you had the components of digital
distribution and then the internet
happened and there was this vacuum where
you had a format that could be digitally
shipped but there was no business model
and then all these pirate networks
happen Napster and in pirate in Sweden
Pirate Bay which was one of the biggest
and it you know I think from a consumer
point of view which which kind of leads
up to the inception of of Spotify from a
consumer point of view consumers for the
first time had this access model to
music where they could without kind of
any marginal costs they could they could
try different tracks you could use music
in in new ways there was no marginal
cost and that was a fantastic consumer
experience that
just all the music ever made I think was
fantastic but it was all so horrible for
artists because there was no business
model around it so they didn't make any
money so the user need almost drove the
user interface before there was a
business model and then there were these
download stores that allowed you to
download files which was a solution but
it didn't solve the access problem there
was still a marginal cost of 99 cents to
try one more track and I think that that
heavily limits how you listen to music
the example always give this you know in
Spotify a huge amount of people listen
to music while they sleep while they go
to sleep and while they sleep if that
costed you $0.99 per three minutes you
probably wouldn't do that and you would
be much less adventurous if there was a
real dollar cost to exploring music so
the access model is interesting in that
it changes your music behavior you can
be you can take much more risk because
there's no marginal cost to it maybe let
me linger on piracy for a second because
I I find especially coming from Russia
piracy is something that's very
interesting to me not me of course ever
but my friends who partook in piracy of
music software TV shows sporting events
and usually to me what that shows is not
that they're they can actually pay the
money and they're not trying to save
money they're choosing the best
experience so what to me piracy shows is
a business opportunity in all these
domains and that's where I think you're
right spot if I stepped in is basically
piracy was is an experience you can
explore was fine music you like and
actually the interface of piracy isn't
as horrible because it's I mean it's not
metadata yeah that metadata is long
download times all kinds of stuff and
what Spotify does is basically
first rewards artists and second makes
the experience of exploring music much
better I mean the same is true I think
for movies and so on this piracy reveals
in the software space for example I'm a
huge user and fan of Adobe products and
the there was much more incentive to
pirate Adobe products before they went
to a monthly subscription plan and now
all of the sudden
that you used to pirate Adobe products
that I know now actually pay gladly for
the monthly subscription I think you're
right I think it's in it's a sign of an
opportunity for product development and
that sometimes the there's a product
market fit before there's a business
model fit in product development I think
that that is that's a sign of it in in
Sweden I think was a bit of both there
was there was a culture where even had a
political party called the pirate party
and this was during the time when when
people said that you know information
should be free it's not was somehow
wrong to charge for ones and zeros so I
think people felt that artists should
probably make some money somehow else
and you know concerts or something so at
least in Sweden it was part really
social acceptance even at the political
level and that but that also forced
Spotify to compete with with free which
which I don't think would actually could
have happen anywhere else in the world
the music industry needed to be doing
bad enough to take that risk
and Sweden was like a perfect testing
ground it had government-funded
high-bandwidth low-latency broadband
which meant that the product would work
and it was also there was no music
revenue anyway so they were kind of like
I don't think this is going to work but
why not
so this product is one that I don't
think could have happened in America
there was large music market for example
so how do you compete with free because
that's an interesting world of the
Internet where most people don't like to
pay for things so Spotify steps in and
tries to yes compete with free how do
you do it so I think two things one is
people are starting to pay for things on
the Internet
I think one way to think about it was
that advertising was the first business
model because no one would put a credit
card on internet transactional with
Amazon was the second and maybe
subscription is their third and if you
look offline subscription is the biggest
those so that may still happen I think
people are starting to pay but
definitely back then we needed to
compete with free and the first thing
you need to do is obviously to lower the
price to free and then you need to be
better somehow and the way that Spotify
was better was on the user experience on
the on the actual performance the
latency of you know even if even if you
had high bandwidth broadband it would
still take you thirty Seconds to a
minute to download one of these tracks
so the Spotify experience of starting
within the perceptual limit of immediacy
about 250 milliseconds meant that the
the whole trick was that felt as if you
had downloaded all the part that it was
on your harddrive it was that fast even
though it wasn't and it was still free
but somehow you were actually still
being a legal citizen now that was the
trick that's what if I managed to to
pull off so yeah I've actually heard you
say this to write this and that was
surprised that wasn't aware of it
because I just took it for granted you
know whenever an awesome thing comes
along you just like of course it has to
be this way that that's exactly right
that it felt like the entire world's
libraries at my fingertips because of
that of that latency being reduced what
was the technical challenge in reducing
Olli so there was a group of really
really talented engineers one of them
called Ludwig freakiest he wrote the
actually from Gothenburg he wrote the
initial the uterine client which is kind
of an interesting backstory to Spotify
you know that we have one of the top
developers from from BitTorrent clients
as well so he wrote utorrent the world's
smallest BitTorrent clients and then he
he was acquired very early by daniel and
martin who found it spotify and they
actually sold the u torrent client to
BitTorrent but kept living so Spotify
had a lot of experience within
peer-to-peer networking so the original
innovation wasn't was a distribution
innovation where Spotify built an
end-to-end media distribution system up
until only a few years ago we actually
hosted all the music ourselves so we had
both the server side in the cloud
and that meant that we could do things
such as having a peer-to-peer solution
to use local caching on the client-side
because back then the world was mostly
desktop but we could also do things like
hack the TCP protocols
things like niggles algorithm for kind
of exponential back-off or ramp up and
just go full throttle and optimize for
latency at the cost of bandwidth and all
of this end-to-end control
meant that we could do an experience
that felt like a step change these days
we actually are on on GCP we don't host
our own stuff and everyone is really
fast these days so that was the initial
competitive advantage but then obviously
you have to move on over time and that
was I was over 10 years ago right that
was in 2008 the product was launched in
Sweden it was in a beta I think 2007 and
it was on the desktop right so his
desktop only there's no phone there was
no phone the iPhone came out in 2008 but
the App Store came out one year later I
think so the writing was on the wall but
there was no phone yet you've mentioned
that people would use Spotify to
discover the songs they liked and then
they would torrent those songs just so
they can copy it to their phone just
hilarious because I'm not torrent quiet
it seriously piracy does seem to be and
like a good guide for business models
video content as far as I know Spotify
doesn't have video content well we do
have music videos and we do have videos
on the on the service but the way we
think about ourselves is that we're an
audio service and we think that if you
look at the amount of time that people
spend on audio it's actually very
similar to the amount of time that's
people spend on video so the opportunity
should be equally big but today is not
at all valued videos value much higher
so we think it's basically completely
undervalues we think of ourselves as an
audio service but within that audio
service I think video can make a lot of
sense I think for when you're when
you're discovering an artist you
probably do want to see them and
understand who they are to understand
their identity you won't see the video
every time now 90% of the time the phone
is gonna be in your pocket
for podcasters you use video I think
that can make a ton of sense so we do
have video but we're an audio service
where think of it as we call it
internally background able video video
that is helpful but isn't isn't the
driver of the narrative I think also if
we look at YouTube the way people
there's quite a few folks who listen to
music on YouTube
so in some sense YouTube was a bit of a
competitor to to Spotify which is very
strange to me that people use YouTube to
listen to music they play essentially
the music videos right but don't watch
the videos and put it in their pocket
well I think I think it's similar to to
what strange I mean it's similar to what
we were for the piracy networks know
where YouTube for historical reasons
have a lot of music videos so you use
people use YouTube for a lot of the
discovery part of the process I think
but then it's not a really good sort of
quote unquote mp3 player because it
doesn't even background then you have to
keep the app in the foreground so so the
consumption on a good consumption tool
but it's a decently good discoveries I
mean I think YouTube is fantastic
products and I use it for all kinds of
purposes so if I were to admit something
I do use YouTube a little bit for the
discovery to assistant discovery process
of songs and then if I like it I'll add
it just fine that's okay that's okay
with that ok so sorry we're jumping
around a little bit so the it's kind of
incredible you look at Napster you look
at the early days of Spotify how do you
one fascinating points how do you grow a
user base see their ins in Sweden you
have an idea I saw the initial sketches
that look terrible how do you grow user
base from all from a few folks to
millions I think there are a bunch of
tactical answers so first of all I think
you need a great product I don't think
you take a bad product and and market it
to be successful so you need a great
product but sorry to interrupt but it's
a totally new way to listen to music too
so it's not just did people realize
immediately that Spotify is a great
product
I think they did so back to the point of
pyrazine it was a totally new way to
listen to music illegally but people had
been used to the access model in Sweden
and the rest of the world for a long
time through piracy so one way to think
about Spotify it was just legal and fast
piracy yeah and so people have been
using it for a long time so they weren't
alien to it they didn't really
understand how it could be legal because
it was seemed too fast and too good to
be true yeah which i think is a great
product proposition if you can be too
good to be true but what I saw again and
again was people showing each other
clicking the song showing how fast it
started and saying I can't believe this
yeah so I really think it was about
speed then we also had an invite product
program that was there was really meant
for scaling because we hosted our own
service we needed as a control scaling
but that built a lot of expectation and
I don't want to say hype because I hype
implies that it was that it wasn't true
excitement around the product and we've
replicated that when we launched in the
in the US we also built up and it might
only program first there are lots of
tactics but I think you need a you need
a great product that solves some problem
and B basically the key innovation there
was technology but on a method level the
innovation was really the access model
versus the ownership model and that was
tricky a lot of people said that they I
mean they wanted to own their music they
would never kind of rent it or borrow it
but I think the fact that we had a free
tier which meant that you get to keep
this music for life as well
helped quite a lot so this is an
interesting psychological point maybe
you can speak to it was a big shift for
me like I get to it's almost like a I go
to therapy for this is uh I think I
would describe my early listening
experience and I think a lot of my
friends do is basically hoarding music
is your like slowly one song by one song
or maybe albums gathering a collection
of music that you love and you own it
it's like awful especially with CDs or
tape you like physically had it and and
what Spotify what I had to come to grips
with it was kind of liberating actually
is to throw away all the music I've had
this therapy session yes people and I
think the mental trick is so actually we
seen the user data once what if I
started a lot of people did the exact
same thing they started hoarding as if
the music would disappear right almost
the equivalent of downloading and so you
know we had these playlists that had
limits of like a few hundred thousand
tracks which we no one will ever like
well they do needs and hundreds and
hundreds of thousands of tracks and to
this day you know some people want to
actually save code and coordinate play
the entire catalog but I think that the
therapy session goes something like
instead of throwing away your music if
you took your files and you store them
in the locker at Google it'd be a
streaming service it's just that in that
locker you have all the world's music
now for free so instead of giving away
your music you got all the music it's
yours it's a you could think of it at
having a copy of the world's catalogue
that forever so you actually got more
music instead of less it's just that you
just took that hard disk and you sent it
to to someone who stored it for you and
once you go through that mental journey
I'm like still my files they're just
over there and I just have 40 million
other 50 million or something now then
people are like okay that's good
the problem is I think because you paid
us a subscription if we hadn't had the
free tier where you would feel like even
if I don't want to pay anymore I still
get to keep them you keep your playlist
forever they don't disappear even though
you stopped paying I think that was
really important if we would have
started us you know you can put in all
this time but if you stopped paying you
lose all your work I think that would
have been a big challenge and what's the
big challenge for a lot of our
competitors that's another reason why I
think the free tier is really important
that people need to feel the security
that the work they put in it will never
disappear even if they decide not to pay
I like how you put the work you put in I
she stopped even think of it that way I
just actually Spotify taught me to just
enjoy music I'm sorry as opposed as
opposed to what I was doing before which
is like in an unhealthy way hoarding
music which I found that because I was
doing that I was listening to a small
selection of songs way too much to our
where I was getting sick of them whereas
Spotify the more liberating kind of
approaches I was just enjoying of course
I listened to stairway to heaven over
and over but because of the extra
variety I don't get as sick of them
there is an interesting statistic I saw
that so
Spotify has maybe you can correct me but
over 50 million songs tracks and over
three billion playlists so yes a million
songs and three billion playlists 60
times more playlists what do you make of
that yeah so the way I think about it is
that from a from is that the station or
machine learning point of view you have
all these if you only thing about
reinforcement learning where you have
this state space of all the tracks and
you can take different journeys through
this through this world and these I
think of these is like people helping
themselves and each other creating
interesting vectors through this space
of tracks and then it's not so
surprising that across you know many
tens of millions of kind of atomic units
there will be billions of paths that
make sense and we're probably pretty
quite far away from having found all of
them so kind of our job now is users
when Spotify started it was really a
search box that was for that time pretty
powerful and then I'd like to refer to
that this programming language called
play listing where if you as you
probably were pretty good at music
you knew your new releases you knew your
backyard law you knew your stairway to
heaven you could create a soundtrack for
yourself using this playlist thing - oh
that's like meta programming language
for music - sounds like your life and
people who were good at music it's back
to how do you scale the product for
people who are good at music that wasn't
actually enough if you had the catalog
in a good search tool and you can create
your own sessions you could create
really good a soundtrack for your entire
life probably perfectly personalized
because you did it yourself but the
problem was most people many people
aren't that good at music they just
can't spend the time even if you're very
good at news it's gonna be hard to keep
up so what we did to try to scale this
was to essentially try to build you can
think of them as a
instead there's this friend that some
people had that helped them navigate
this music catalog that's what we're
trying to do for you but also there is
something like 200 million active users
on Spotify so there it's okay so from
the machine learning perspective you
have these 200 million people plus
they're creating it's really interesting
to think of playlist as I mean I don't
know if you meant it that way but it's
almost like a programming language it's
a released a trace of exploration of
those individual agents of the the
listeners and you have all this new
tracks coming in so it's a fascinating
space that is ripe for machine learning
so that is there is it is it possible
how can playlist be used as data in
terms of machine learning and just to
help Spotify organize the music so we
found in our data not surprising that
people who play listed lots they retain
much better they had a great experience
and so our first attempt was to playlist
for users and so we acquired this
company called tune ego of editors and
professional playlist errs and kind of
leverage the maximum of human
intelligence to help to help build kind
of these vectors through the track space
for four people and that that broaden
the product then the obvious next and we
you know use statistical means where
they could see what when they created a
playlist how did that play this perform
you know they could see skips of the
songs they could see how the songs
perform and they manually iterated the
playlist to maximize performance for a
large group of people but there were
never enough editors to playlist for you
personally so the promise of machine
learning was to go from kind of group
personalization using editors and tools
into statistics to individualization and
then what's so interesting about the 3
billion playlist we have is we ended the
truth is we lucked out this was not
a priori strategy as is often the case
it looks really smart in hindsight was
as dumb luck we looked at these
playlists and we had some people in the
company a person named their grandson it
was really good at machine learning
already back in in back then in like
2007-2008 back then it was mostly
collaborative filtering you so forth but
we realized that what what this is is
people are grouping tracks for
themselves that have some semantic
meaning to them and then they actually
label it with a playlist name as well so
in a sense people were grouping tracks
along semantic dimensions and labeling
them and so could you could you use that
information to find that that latent
embedding and so we started playing
around with collaborative filtering and
we saw tremendous success with it
basically trying to extract some of
these some of these dimensions and and
if you think about it's not surprising
at all it'd be quite surprising if
playlists were actually random if they
had no semantic meaning for most people
they group these tracks for some reason
so we just happen to cross this
incredible data set where people are
taking taken these tens of millions of
tracks and group them along different
semantic vectors and the semantics being
outside the individual users it's some
kind of universal there's a universal
embedding that holds across people on
this earth yes I do think that the
embeddings you finally gonna be
reflective of the people who play listed
so if if you have a lot of indie lovers
who playlist your embed is going to
perform better there but what we found
was that yes there were these these
latent similarities they were very
powerful and we we had them it was
interesting because I think that the
people who play listed the most
initially were this so-called music
aficionados who who really into music
and they often had a certain they're
tasteful stuff is often certain geared
towards a certain type of music and so
what surprised us if you look at the
problem from the outside you might
expect that
the algorithms would start performing
best with mainstreamers first because it
somehow feels like an easier problem to
solve mainstream tastes than really
particular tastes it was the complete
opposite for us the recommendations
performed fantastically for people who
saw themselves as having very unique
taste that's probably because all of
them playlist ed and they didn't perform
so well for mainstream is they actually
thought they were a bit too particular
and unorthodox so we had the complete
opposite of what we expected success
within the hardest problem first and
then had to try to scale to more
mainstream recommendations so you've
also acquired echo nests that analyze a
song data so in your view maybe you can
talk about so what kind of data is there
from a machine learning perspective
there's a like a huge amount what we're
talking about playlists thing and just
user data of what people are listening
to the playlists are constructing and so
on and then there's the the actual data
within a song what makes a song I don't
know the actual waveforms right is there
any how do you mix the two how much
values are in each to me it seems like
user data is well it's a romantic notion
that the song itself would contain
useful information but if I were to
guess user data would be much more
powerful like playlists would be much
more powerful yeah so we use both our
biggest success initially what was with
playlist data without understanding
anything about the structure of this
song but when we acquire the echo nest
they had the inverse problem they
actually didn't have any play data they
were just they were a provider of
recommendations but they didn't actually
have any play data so they they looked
at the structure of songs sonically and
they looked at Wikipedia for cultural
references and so forth right cool and
did a lot of NLU and so forth so we got
that skill into the company and combine
kind of our user data with their with
their kind of content-based so you can
think of as we were used to based and
they were content based in their
recommendations and we combine those two
and for some cases where you have a new
there's no no play date obviously you
have to try to go by either you know who
the artist is or or the sonic
information in the song or what it's
similar to so there's definitely value
in in both and we do a lot in both but I
would say yes the user data captures
things that that have to do with culture
in the greater society that you would
never see in the in the content itself
but that said we have seen we have a
research lab in Paris when you know we
can talk about more about that on kind
of machine layer on the creator side
what it can do for creators not just for
the consumers but where we looked at how
does the structure of a song actually
affect the listening behavior and it
turns out that there is a lot of we can
we can predict things like skips based
on we you know based on on the song
itself we could say that maybe you
should move that chorus a bit because
you're skippers gonna go up here there
is a lot of latent structure in the
music which is not surprising because it
is some sort of mind hack so there
should be structured that's probably
what we respond to you just blew my mind
actually for from the creator
perspective so that's really interesting
topic that probably most creators aren't
taking advantage of right so there's
I've recently got to interact with a few
folks youtubers who are like obsessed
with this idea of what do I do to make
sure people keep watching the video and
then like look at the analytics of which
point if people turn off and so on first
of all don't think that's healthy but
it's it's because you can do it a little
too much but it is a really powerful
tool for helping the creative process
you just made me realize you could do
the same thing for creation of music and
so is that something you've looked into
oh is it can you speak to how much
opportunity there is for that yeah I
think I listen to to the podcast with
Suraj yeah and I thought it was
fantastic and directed to do the same
thing where he said and he said he
posted something in the morning
yeah immediately watch the feedback
where the drop off was and then
responded to that in the afternoon
yeah which which is quite different from
how people make podcasts for example yes
exactly I mean the feedback loop is
almost non-existent it's very so if we
back out a one-level I think actually
both for music and podcasts which we
also do is let Spotify I think there's a
tremendous opportunity just for the
creation workflow and I think it's
really interesting speaking to you who
because you're a musician a developer
and a podcaster if you think about those
three different roles if you if you make
the leap as a musician if you if you
think about it as a software tool chain
really your door with the stems
that's the IDE right that's what you
work in source code formant with your
with with what you're creating then you
sit around and you play with that and
when you're happy you compile that thing
into some sort of you know AAC or mp3 or
something you do that because you get
distribution there's so many runtimes
for that mp3 across the world and
Carstairs and stuff so you kind of
compile this executable you ship it out
and kind of an old fashioned box
software analogy and then you hope for
the best right right but as a as a as a
software developer you'd never do that
first you go and get helping you
collaborate with other Creators yeah and
then you know you think it'd be crazy to
just ship one version of your software
without doing an a/b test without any
feedback loop and then HD tracking
exactly and then you would you would
look at the feedback loops and try to
optimize that thing right so I think if
you think of it as a as a very specific
software tool chain it looks quite
arcane you know the tools that a music
creator has versus what a software
developer has so that's kind of how we
think about it and why wouldn't a why
wouldn't a music creator have something
like github you could collaborate much
more easily so we have we bought this
company called sound trap which has a
kind of Google Docs for music approach
where you can collaborate with other
people on the kind of source code format
with stamps and I think introducing
things like AI tools there to help you
as you're creating music both in in
helping you you know
put accompaniment your music like drums
or something help you master and mix
automatically help you understand how
this track will perform exactly what you
would expect as a software developer I
think makes a lot of sense and I think
the same goes for a podcaster I think
podcasters will expect to have the same
kind of feedback loop that Siraj has
like why wouldn't you maybe maybe it's
not healthy but sorry I wanted to
criticize the fact cuz you can overdo it
because a lot of the each and we're in a
new era of that so you can become
addicted to it and therefore what people
say you become a slave to the YouTube
algorithm are sort of it's a it's always
a danger of a new technology as opposed
to say if you're creating a song
becoming too obsessed about the intro
riff to the song that keeps people
listening versus actually the entirety
of the creation process it's a balance
absolutely but the fact that there's
zero I mean you're blowing my mind right
now because you're completely right that
there is no signal whatsoever there's no
feedback whatsoever in the creation
process and music or podcasting almost
at all and are you saying that Spotify
is hoping to help create tools to not
tools but no tools actually actually
tools from traders absolutely so we have
we've remains micro stations the last
few years around music creation this
company called soundtrap which is the
door digital audio workstation but that
is browser-based and that their focus
was really the Google Docs approach
where you can collaborate with people
much more easily then you could in
previous tools so we have some of these
tools that we're working with that we
want to make accessible and then we can
connect it with our with our consumption
data we can create this feedback loop
where we could help you understand we
could help you create and help you
understand how you will perform we also
acquired this other company within
podcasting called anchor which is one of
the biggest podcasting tools mobile
focused so really focused on simple
creation or easy access to create
but that also gives us this feedback
loop and even before that we invested in
something called Spotify for artists and
Spotify for podcasters which is an app
that you can download you can verify
that you are that creator and then you
get you get things that you know
software developers have had for years
you can see where if you look at your
podcast for example on Spotify or or a
song that you released you can see how
it's performing which cities is
performing and who is listening to it
what's the demographic break up so
similar in the sense that you can
understand how you're actually doing on
the on the platform so we we definitely
want to build tools I think you also
interviewed the head of research for
Adobe and I think that's an item back to
photoshop that you like I think that's
an interesting analogy as well Photoshop
I think has been very innovative in
helping photographers and artists and I
think there should be the same kind of
tools for for music creators where you
could get you know AI assistants for
example that's you creating music as you
can do with with Adobe where you can I
want to sky over here and you can get
help creating that sky the really
fascinating thing is what Adobe doesn't
have is a distribution for the content
you create so you don't have the data of
if I create if I uh you know whatever
creation I'm making Photoshop a premiere
I can't get like immediate feedback like
I can on YouTube for example about the
way people are responding and if Spotify
is creating those tools that that's a
really exciting actually world but let's
talk a little about podcast it's so I
have trouble talking to one person so
it's a bit terrifying and kind of hard
to fathom but an average sixty to a
hundred thousand people will listen to
this episode okay so it's intimidating
it's intimidating
so I hosted on blueberry I don't know if
I'm pronouncing that correctly actually
it looks like most people listen to an
Apple podcast cashbox and pocket gas
and only about a thousand listen on
Spotify in just my podcast right so
where do you see a time when Spotify
will dominate this so Spotify is
relatively new into this podcasting talk
nesting site yeah in podcasting what's
the deal with podcasting and Spotify how
serious is Spotify about podcasting do
you see a time where everybody would
listen to you know probably a huge
amount of people majority perhaps listen
to music on Spotify do you see a time
when the same is true for podcasting
well I certainly hope so
that is our mission our mission as a
company is actually to enable a million
creators to live off of their art in a
billion people inspired by it and what I
think it is interesting about that
mission is it actually puts the crater's
first even though it's not as a consumer
focused company and it says to be able
to live off of their art not just make
some money or further art as well so
it's quite an ambitious project and so
we think about creators of all kinds and
we kind of expanded our mission from
being music - being audio a while back
and that's not so much because we think
we made that decision we think that my
decision was was made for us
we need the world made that decision
whether we like it or not when you put
in your headphones you're gonna make a
choice between music and new episode of
of your podcast or something else right
we're in that world whether we like it
or not
and that you know that's how radio work
so we decided that we think it's about
audio you can see the rise of audiobooks
and so forth we think audio is this
great opportunity so we decided to enter
it and and obviously Apple and Apple
podcast is absolutely dominating in
podcasting and we didn't have a single
podcast only like two years ago
what we did though was we we we looked
at this and said no can we bring
something to this you know we want to do
this but the back to the
Josefa we have to do something that
consumers actually value to be able to
do this and the reason we've gone from
not existing at all to being the the
record of what quite a wide margin the
second-largest podcast consumption still
still wide gap to iTunes but we're
growing quite fast I think it's because
when we when we looked at the consumer
problem
people said surprisingly that they
wanted their podcasts and music in the
same in the same application so what we
did was we took a little bit of a
different approach what we said instead
of building a separate podcast app we
thought it's their consumer problem to
solve here because the others are very
successful already and we thought there
was in making a more seamless experience
where you can have your podcast in your
music in the same application because we
think it's audio to you and that that
has been successful and that meant that
we actually had 200 million people to
offer this to instead of starting from 0
so I think we have a good chance because
we're taking a different approach than
the competition and back to the other
thing I mentioned about creators because
we're looking at the end-to-end flow I
think there's a tremendous amount of
innovation to do around podcast as a
format when we have creation tools and
consumption I think we could start
improving what podcasting is I mean
podcast is this this opaque big like 1/2
hour file that you're streaming which it
really doesn't make that much sense in
2019 that it's not interactive there's
no feedback loops nothing like that so I
think if we're gonna win it's gonna have
to be because we build a better product
for creators and for for consumers so
we'll see but it's certainly our goal we
have a long way to go
well the creators part is really
exciting you ready you got me hooked
there is the only stats I have a
blueberry just recently added the stats
of whether it's listened to the end or
not and that's like a huge improvement
but that's still nowhere to where you
could possibly go into her statistics
you just download this pot of five
podcasters up and verify and then then
you k