As a US-based subscriber (Premium) since before Spotify was even launched in the US (I found a UK postal code and subscribed ~14 years ago), I am well aware of the premium Spotify places on the ease of the user experience -- and I am sincerely grateful for much of these efforts. With all of that said, this is my first-ever submission to the Community, so this comes after quite a bit of thought.
The emphasis on ease over control has been largely beneficial to the browsing experience, until somewhat recently. It has, in recent weeks, months, and even the last few years, become increasingly apparent to me that one of the best elements of the experience -- Spotify's proprietary personalization engine -- has been compromised by financial interests in exploiting the very essence of "personalized recommendations" by surfacing, without any labels, what are very obviously "sponsored" recommendations that I have absolutely no interest in. The engine has further been jeopardized by an extreme degree of recency bias; that is to say: I can make a "Radio" out of any classic rock song and, inevitably, I will see 3 or 4 of my most-listened-to-this-month electronic tracks surfaced in that list (which is, frankly, ridiculous).
Here's where this all leads: in order to power these formerly-amazing recommendations, Spotify is sitting on a treasure trove of data about each user's browsing & listening behavior (to say nothing of the deep content-based filtering applied to the specific nuances of each title in the library) -- and yet, none of this data is made available to the end user outside of in the infamous annual "Spotify Wrapped" recap of piecemeal insights. It is beyond obvious that Spotify knows how many times I've listened to any song, any artist, or any album I've ever touched. Spotify also knows the date (probably down to a fraction of a second, actually) that each Playlist is created. What good reason is there that none of this information is made available to the end user to sort, filter, and enhance the user experience? Particularly if it's relatively "hidden" -- in no way compromising the ease of the user journey; rather, these metadata points are accessible only to those who care enough to reach for them.
Additionally, if I were able to "tune" or "bias" my recommendations to completely eliminate "recency," to have a propensity toward "new track discovery" and, if I had to pay extra to get rid of the ostensibly bought-and-paid for listings in my recommendations (and, particularly, in playlists like Discover Weekly and Release Radar), my engagement would increase, the service's Net Promoter Score (NPS) would be even higher than its peak ever was, and my Lifetime Value (LTV) would go up substantially as a result of my willingness to pay for this functionality.
I fear we are fast approaching a crossroads: one direction takes us into Youtube/Amazon territory, where no matter what I pay for my subscription, it becomes inevitable that *I* am the product and my attention, eyeballs, and Spotify's screen real estate all become monetized like the advertising hall of fame, and lead to a very slow, very long destruction of the company and product I hold more dearly than any other. The other direction, however, is where Spotify defects from the ways of the now-awful, brain-ruining platforms that used to thrive a decade ago, and instead continues to forge new paths, offering unprecedented control over the user journey and demonstrating a tremendous willingness to pay from one of the most loyal subscriber-bases in modern history. My faith is dwindling, but I've yet to lose hope.
Staff / Moderator/ 3 years ago in Social & Random