If Echo Nest were as important as you say, then that's bad news, because Glenn MacDonalds, the Echo Nest chief engineer, was one of those who were fired in the

If Echo Nest were as important as you say, then that's bad news, because Glenn MacDonalds, the Echo Nest chief engineer, was one of those who were fired in the recent downsizing. I'm not so sure they deserve all credit for Spotify's discovery features - those where at their best right after Sander Dieleman and Aäron van den Oord were interns there, and both those guys were snapped up by Deepmind and have a ridiculously good publication history by now. But that Spotify is going to get a ton worse without MacDonald, is pretty certain.