My favourite product and how I’d improve it — Spotify
A fairly typical question in the PM interview process — my aim is to discuss various different products and lay out my thought process
I use Spotify every day. In fact, I was one of Spotify’s early adopters in Canada. They did an early access program for the Canadian market when I was in high school (sometime between 2010–2012 if my memory is correct), and you had to get a referral code or link from someone who already had access. I was lucky enough to get one from a classmate and I’ve been using the same account since the day I signed up. One con is that this means that a lot of my suggested or recommended music is heavily influenced by my taste as a teenager, and it’s very difficult to get the machine learning to recommend me music that’s better suited for my taste today.
Note: I googled when Spotify did their invite-only program in Canada, and most articles state 2014 as the timeline, but I distinctly remember asking my high school classmate for her referral/invite code as I was already doing my undergrad in a different province in 2014. They must have did a very small referral program to test the market or maybe she had access to a US account, I don’t know. Maybe I created this memory.
But let’s move on — Spotify is a great product. They’ve got tons of music, and I pay for a Spotify Duo account so that I can listen to music ad-free. I used to be a freemium user, and then Spotify rolled out a student pricing tier while I was in university so I jumped on that. I had a Family account for a brief period afterwards but eventually downgraded to their Duo plan as I had kicked my ex off the Family plan, and it was just me & my roommate at that point on the account.
The main way I use Spotify is in either of two ways — at home, I typically play music onto external speakers (that is, not on my laptop’s built in audio speakers). With WFH becoming the new norm, I always have music (or a podcast) playing in the background while I work unless I’m in a meeting. It’s nice to live alone, I can play my music as loud as I want. When I’m outside going for a walk, or commuting, I’m connected to my AirPods. I rarely use my iPhone’s built-in speakers when I’m outside. Wouldn’t you be annoyed if the commuter next to you was blasting EDM on their phone at 9am instead of having earphones/headphones connected?
Focusing on my at home experience, what kind of speakers do I actually use? I have 3 Google Home Minis, and I use those as my music speakers. Before anyone suggests better quality speakers, I’d like to mention that I am hard of hearing, and it is impossible for me to discern the difference in audio quality. Living in a small apartment also means that the audio quality is loud enough to fill the space anyways, and I don’t see the need to upgrade to nicer speakers from Bose or Sonos. I like being able to use voice prompts to get my speakers to start playing music, start timers, inquire about the weather, and other random tasks. This frees up my hands to do other things and I don’t have to constantly be on my phone to do things.
My only problem is that if you do not use the “correct” prompt to initiate the music playing function, it will randomly select a playlist/song to play. I use the pronoun “it” because I’m not sure who I should be blaming for this issue. Is Spotify the problem, or is the Google Home integration? Who’s talking to who? I actually posed this question on the Google Nest forums. Unfortunately I did not get a response, and the thread has now been locked.
Ever since I started using this integration, my Google Home devices have been playing music from playlists that I don’t recognize and music that I don’t even particularly like. I initially thought that my account had been hacked, as I know this is an issue that affects tons of users, so I went through the process of changing my passwords and disconnecting and then reauthorizing any 3rd party integrations even though I had never been notified by Spotify that my account had been affected.
The problem persisted even after that. I thought perhaps it’s because I live with a roommate and she occasionally uses the Google Home Mini device in the living room to play her music from her Spotify. I added her to my Google Home account, so she has her own profile set up and everything, but it turns out that that wasn’t the case. I was able to use my Spotify account outside on my phone while she played music at home, and I never got the “sorry your account is being used on another device” error message, so that wasn’t the root cause either.
This is such a frustrating issue for me, especially as the command to play music is so simple — “Hey Google, play music [on device name]”. I’ve had to learn to specifically say “Hey Google, play [name of playlist]” or “Hey Google, play my music” (this one triggers my Liked Songs). There’s no instruction manual included with the set up process and I’ve never bothered to look up support documentation. How many people actually go through the effort to google support documentation from any tech company and read through a lengthy explanation. Based on what I do at work, I’m going to wager that the number of readers is low in comparison to the total number of users.
Let’s move on to how I would improve Spotify then. More specifically, I am suggesting an improvement to their Google Home integration. I can’t tell if Google is using Spotify’s API to initiate the music playing feature, or vice versa, but regardless I would suggest that someone add an improvement where the “Hey Google, play music” prompt either picks up where you left off on the Spotify app, or plays one of the playlists you are following.
For the best experience, if I already have the Spotify app open on my laptop or phone (even if the app is in the background), and the music is currently paused, Google Home should naturally continue the song. If Spotify is not open on any of my devices, it should play a song from one of my following playlists but if I am a user that hasn’t or doesn’t follow any playlists, it should trigger a self-created playlist or their Liked Songs at least. I’ve already connected my Spotify account to Google Home, so they should be able to figure this part out with some work. In the scenario where I am a brand new Spotify user with no data, then a randomly selected playlist would be acceptable (as long as that playlist matches the user’s region — it once triggered “Top Male Artists of 2019 Indonesia” for me. I’m located in Canada, how is this relevant to me??).
This would greatly improve the experience. As I mentioned above, I thought I had been hacked, that the shared Google Home account experience wasn’t working, but it wasn’t any of those things. It’s frustrating to have to use more words to get my Google Home speakers to play the right thing, when voice activated devices should just naturally work that way we perceive them to. Playing an unknown song or playlist gives me the impression that something went wrong, and I need to do something to fix it. Not every company will tell you in a timely manner than your account was hacked, and many people will simply ignore their emails anyways. If my Google Home speaker asked me what playlist I would like to play, that would be a suitable workaround but it still requires me to exert more effort than what I deem ideal.
I still use my Spotify and Google Home Mini products together. I’ve figured out how to get around the problem, but how many users would have dropped off during the troubleshooting phase? I consider myself a fairly advanced tech savvy user, but if my mom (Boomer generation, ESL, not very familiar with tech products) encountered this issue, would she have been able to figure out what was causing the problem? Would she have known or figured out on her own what the “correct” prompt is? It would be interesting to see the data for how many users connect their Spotify account to their Google Home, and then drop off using it over time. Maybe there are other issues with the integration that I haven’t discovered or perceived to be an issue. Considering how often Spotify and Google run promotions together (my latest Google Home Mini came from their latest “Free device” promo for existing Spotify users), I assume there are a significant number of users who have used both products integrated at least once. I wonder how many of these users are repeat users, and how many eventually stop being users of the integration at all.
Random thought, but does Spotify and Google keep track of how many of their Google Home Mini devices pop up on places like Facebook Marketplace after running these promotions? 🤔
