Spotify is the friend you never knew you needed
Let me ask you this. Which were your favourite songs of 2000s? How did you come to discover them?
So, do you have an answer to this? Cool, keep it to yourself.
Now, if I were to ask you in 2010 what would make an amazing music app, what would your response be? (sorry, if you feel that I am asking too many questions)
- A collection of all the songs on the face of this earth
- Download option for your favourites, to listen them when you are offline
- An option to create playlist of your choosing
- A very cheap plan to access all these features
What more can you want right? Right?
So, what this implies is that anyone with access to vast array of capital can do this (Hey! Prime Music). Think about it! You pay artists obscene sums to license their music and burn cash to get users to listen on your app. After a point you become too big and no one can compete with you. Easy playbook right?
But, this is where Spotify comes into picture. They realised and executed something that changed the way we interact with music. They went further up the consumer decision journey on listening to music and strived to become your “music connoisseur” friend. Confused? Let me explain-
There is a journey which a consumer follows when they decide to listen to music and it can be grossly simplified to be as under-
Music discovered > Music listened > “Me Laike” > Reliable song source found (E.g. CD, App etc.) > Music played > Music played again x100 > “Me bored”
Traditionally, finding “good music” has been an arduous task with customer serendipitously discovery a song or genre or artist they like via their friends or relatives or through a random stroke of luck.
And this is where Spotify realised that they need to become primarily a music discovery platform, and on top of it they created a full-stack music app. Spotify aims to liberate a casual music listener to a more “serious” consumer by allowing users to find and explore music with ease.
They didn’t just create a playlist of Top 50 viral songs, Popular songs, sad songs etc. They went a step ahead.
Spotify AI tools such as a i) Radio for individual song (to find similar music vibes), ii) curating daily playlists for users and iii) songs recommendations for each individual listener, simplified the first step of music discovery significantly for a listener.
Now you don’t have to schmooze with a music expert or spend hours on google to search the relevant music for you. Spotify does it for you now! What is amazing is that “Music discovered” and “Music listened” are concurrent steps in the customer journey, and this offers a huge moat to Spotify against the competition.
So, dear reader, you see, Spotify is the friend you never knew you needed. But be wary of this relationship, it might become toxic (as any relationship tends to be) and you might not have any way out of it! :(