My Role
With several years of experience working at the cross-section of consumer, creator, and content initiatives, I was involved in this initiative from a very early stage. I co-wrote the strategy for the initial launch of music videos and defined success 3 years out. I also identified the content strategy and the 1500 video content inventory to launch in 11 markets to maximize statistically significant results in foreground consumption.
I was in charge of leading the content workstream which oversaw legal and label licensing, publishing, marketing, content ingestion, content moderation, metadata, transcoding and feature teams. My responsibility as the lead was to ensure that we had the necessary content inventory for launch. I also made decisions regarding data modeling and made sure that audio tracks were associated with their respective video counterparts. This was important because the entry point to videos is usually through the audio track.
As one of the core leads of this high-priority initiative (bet) for Spotify, I aligned cross-functional teams, provided weekly updates to executives, conducted research and product reviews, made product decisions, and prioritized and planned work for teams.
Key Metrics and Results
Please note that the test is still in progress, and therefore, I am unable to share the results publicly.
Relevant metrics:
Consumer: MAU, Foreground time, Music Video consumption as % of total consumption, increase in foreground consumption
Content: streamshare, music video catalog size
My Learnings
I learned the most about cross-functional collaboration and decision-making. This initiative took the coordination of the work of hundreds of people, and sometimes making the right decision felt nearly impossible. We mitigated that by implementing the one/two-way door decision framework and keeping a decision log. Also, getting a great Program Manager helped :)
Links
Launching Music Videos
Spotify, the leading music platform, now offers more than just audio and the 8-second looping video to accompany audio tracks. In 2023, Spotify introduced music videos, solidifying its position as the ultimate music platform. The launch was a huge success: listeners who discover a track with a music video on Spotify are 34% more likely to stream it again the following week. Plus, music videos inspire action – on average, tracks with videos are 24% more likely to be saved or shared. I was one of the leaders in charge of this enormous project that spanned several months and took hundreds of people to build. Here's a summary of my contributions.
Kinga Asboth © 2024
