no original thoughts club - by tina zhang - digital tinz

Three years ago I applied for a job at spotify where I presented an impassioned (and somewhat halfbaked) thesis on how the platform was missing out on the greenfield opportunity to become more social. Whereas soundcloud was a place where djs and indie kids hung out, I always found myself in an echo chamber of my own algorithmically-derived tastes on spotify. Among the more controversial takes I had was that the platform was pushing specific songs to its users via its personalized and editorial playlists. I noted that from my current discover weekly queue, 9 of the first 10 artists are not artists I’ve heard of and yet 8 of them happen to be featured in a popular spotify editorial playlist. Spotify, I argued, had a heavy hand in influencing what users listen to via these ‘personalized’ playlists, and thus which songs go on to become hits. And the more Spotify is able to influence what its listeners consume, the greater power it has to negotiate with record labels (its main cost driver).

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• Mandy Xu