Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek made a stunning confession in a current publish to X (previously Twitter), the place he admits not solely that he didn’t provide you with the concept for Spotify’s flagship function, the streamer’s “Uncover Weekly” playlist, he didn’t even perceive the attraction at first when it was introduced.
As an alternative, he says that when the group pitched the concept for “Uncover Weekly,” he “wasn’t positive about it.”
“I didn’t actually get why it was particular,” Ek wrote on X. “However the group stored constructing on it and an increasing number of folks internally received excited. After we launched it, I used to be stunned. Seems, our customers actually liked it, and at the moment it’s one of many prime options on Spotify,” Ek stated.
I am actually glad when my group at Spotify proves me improper, like they did with “Uncover Weekly.”
Individuals usually assume founders have every thing deliberate out from the beginning, however that is not less than not true for me. A whole lot of instances, I depend on suggestions from our group, clients, and companions.…
— Daniel Ek (@eldsjal) September 4, 2023
Launched in 2015, “Uncover Weekly” was a direct success in addition to a big innovation in using algorithmic personalization to alter the best way customers got here throughout new music and artists they’d take pleasure in whereas utilizing Spotify’s service. On the time of its arrival, Spotify’s service had solely 75 million lively customers in complete and, inside lower than a yr, 40 million of them had engaged with the brand new playlist. Along with serving as a preferred discovery device, the playlist additionally helped lure new customers to streaming at a time when many have been nonetheless buying their music from iTunes.
In truth, “Uncover Weekly” grew so well-liked that it led Spotify to develop a variety of customized playlists over time that adopted, together with Launch Radar, Day by day Mixes, and others meant to showcase the tunes you’ve liked prior to now, these designed for particular conditions like exercises or commutes, and extra, together with its well-liked year-end retrospective Wrapped.
This pattern towards personalizing the music expertise has even influenced Spotify’s more moderen developments like its AI DJ function and its redesigned house feed. It’s additionally pushed rivals like Apple Music and YouTube Music to repeat from Spotify with customized playlists of their very own.
EK had shared this stunning anecdote about how he didn’t instantly perceive the attraction of what later grew to become Spotify’s flagship function within the hopes of passing on recommendation to different founders in regards to the energy of listening.
“Individuals usually assume founders have every thing deliberate out from the beginning, however that’s not less than not true for me. A whole lot of instances, I depend on suggestions from our group, clients, and companions. And I alter my thoughts usually. My job is a little bit of that of a curator or producer – I’m placing collectively items of a puzzle,” Ek wrote, as a part of his admission. “Some of the underrated expertise now we have in our society is listening. So I’m sending this tweet out on the earth as a reminder to myself to work on changing into an ever higher listener,” he concluded.
Ek has been posting to X in current days to share his insights about being a founder, selections he made at Spotify within the early days, and different phrases he lives by. For example, he’s shared how Spotify landed on inexperienced for its model id, how he carves out screen-free time for his ideas, and extra.
In a single publish, he additionally revealed his fears about being an “unreasonable” boss, battling together with his have to be preferred. Within the publish, Ek referenced a George Bernard Shaw quote that claims, “The cheap man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in attempting to adapt the world to himself. Subsequently, all progress relies on the unreasonable man.”
The publish acquired suggestions from Mark Cuban, Alexis Ohanian, and Elon Musk, the latter who joked he’s “overcome the will to be preferred.”