Spotify Product Sense: Designing Social Features for Listeners and Their Friends

Spotify wants to make its app better through social features. What would you build, who would it serve, and why? ```hint Follow the shares Think about the moments when people already talk about or swap music with friends, and notice how many of those moments happen outside Spotify today. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the main goal to keep existing listeners engaged, to bring in new users through invitations, or to convert free listeners to Premium? - Should I cover music only, or podcasts and audiobooks as well? - Are features that use phone contacts or link to accounts outside Spotify acceptable, given the privacy concerns? - Should I focus on a particular listening surface, such as mobile, desktop or the car? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A goal for social features tied to Spotify's business, and why social is a credible lever when competitors offer similar catalogs - A chosen listener segment and the specific moments where sharing or listening with others breaks down today, with awareness of the shared features Spotify already has - Several ideas prioritized by impact, reach and effort, with one designed in enough detail to build - Privacy, safety and notification controls for what gets shared and with whom - Success metrics with guardrails, and a test design that accounts for effects spreading between friends ### Follow-up Questions - Social networks built into music services have a poor track record. Why would your design avoid that fate? - How would you protect listeners who use Spotify alone or treat their listening as private? - If a user in the treatment group shares with a friend in the control group, how does that affect your experiment, and what would you do about it?