7 ms·

How Spotify builds products [pdf]

63 points by bernatfp 13y ago

jseban 13y ago
TL;DR: they hire an "agile consultant" to help them...
- strictfp 13y ago
  This particular agile consultant is pretty well-known and really good at what he does, so I don't see what you are getting at.
namelezz 13y ago
Look like waterfall.
kosso 13y ago
Nice! An image in there bears a startling resemblance to an image I did in 2005 to try and describe what I do as a "createc" : http://www.flickr.com/photos/81073195@N00/2829444578/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/81073195@N00/2829444578/
Kiro 13y ago
Considering the number of talented people at Spotify I'm constantly surprised by the lack of quality in their products. For some reason they are unable to leverage the talent pool.
- thenmar 13y ago
  Can you give some examples? I'm pretty happy with Spotify, and I've found the Discover tool very useful. I still read music blogs and forums, but Discover finds me about 1 really good, yet-unheard group in every 30 I try. In my experience, that's only a little less signal than the music blogs I use which are curated by humans with similar tastes to mine.
  - jorde 13y ago
    Absolutely agree with OP, Spotify has a serious problem in product quality. Few examples: * Totally inconsistent design - I think they are now rolling out a complete redesign to address this * The current website was absolutely clueless of states when first released (i.e. showing signup buttons for logged in users) * HTML views in the app shows/loads incorrect data ...and the list goes on. I started using Spotify when it was still invite-only in Northern Europe and converted into paying customer when the Android app came out (2009 fall I think?) but switched to Rdio recently due to all the problems with the service. The underlying streaming tech is rock solid but everything else seemed to go down hill release after a release.
    - Dewie 13y ago
      > * The current website was absolutely clueless of states when first released (i.e. showing signup buttons for logged in users) I think the website keeps urging me to upgrade to premium when I'm logged in, even though I've had premium for years...
  - secstate 13y ago
    I would also add that, sadly, rdio has not kept up with Spotify's library. It also seems built less around the user's interest and more to get new music in front of people. Probably great for the artist's reps, but when Drake and 7 Days of Funk shows up under Heavy Rotation and I've never listened to anything resembling either, they've already failed. And while I applaud their attempts at a native wrapper around HTML5, you can hardly claim that Rdio has "nailed it" with regards to their native app. It's a whole different product.
    - brajkovic 13y ago
      I'm not sure who you're replying to or if I'm reading your post right, but Rdio's mobile app is not a native wrapper around HTML5, it's built on top of Xamarin's stack, which provides API wrappers around the native platform.
      - 13y ago
- cloverich 13y ago
  I swapped my Spotify subscription for a Google Music subscription a couple weeks ago for the percieved lack of development. I also seriously miss the album view that they removed (why?) and refuse to re-implement[1] - I frequently make album based playlists, and not having the album covers to group songs by is a pretty big usability issue for me (not just a "nifty trick" as they labeled it...). Compared to Spotify, what I like better about Google Music: 1. Much better Android client (faster, better UI) 2. Collection and My Albums features 3. Can quickly make a playlist from a radio station based on a song (which can be downloaded to my mobile phone) 4. Can upload music I own that is not in the catalog 5. Lots of top / key albums by Genre and Sub-genre - have found lots of new music since switching. 6. No facebook activity stream What I miss from Spotify: 1. Having a desktop client (though don't miss as much as I thought I would) 2. Some music missing (only 2 artist so far, and I own the albums so I guess its only kind-of an issue) [1]:http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Please-restore-View-as-Album-List-feature/idi-p/368022 http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Please-restore...
cantbecool 13y ago
The largest issue with Spotify is the max bitrate they use for non-subscribers. Oh, yeah, I'm just going to deal with your ads for variable quality, sure.
- nodata 13y ago
  That's not an issue, that's freemium. You can pay if you want to.
jacobkg 13y ago
If you liked this article, you would probably enjoy a previous one about how Spotify scales teams: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1018963/Articles/SpotifyScaling.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1018963/Articles/Spotify...
meritt 13y ago
I cancelled my two-year Spotify membership when I finally reached my breaking point with them continually removing key features.
- zzzmarcus 13y ago
  What are they removing? I find that they're constantly adding more and more. They're recommendations particularly just keep improving.
secstate 13y ago
I find it funny how polarized folks seem, especially with regards to what Spotify is doing wrong. But I suppose when you mess with someone's music you're gonna tend to draw the ire when things don't work exactly as they are supposed. We can't all whip the llama's ass, I suppose ;-) I especially remember the nerds I grew up with at the height of the Ripping Era of music, where we all had our own way to organize everything. I was always flabbergasted at folks like my roommate in college that just had every song in a big "Music" folder and then had the tracks arranged just so in Winamp, hehe.
slimshady 13y ago
No intentions to spread FUD but Spotify fails to even remember that I like my playlists to be sorted by recency of addition. I always have to manual click their tab to sort it on mobile app.
- kevinchen 13y ago
  They do have lots of quality issues with their software -- I'm not sure why anyone would want to build products like them. Once, they had a Flash video of a concert on the first tab of their app that was impossible to stop playing. The best you could do was play your music loudly over it.
jakejake 13y ago
Does anybody know what technology is used for the Spotify desktop apps? I was poking around to see if I could figure it out. It seems like something perhaps written in C with a hybrid of widget toolkit and HTML. I was just curious because I'm always interested to see how other people are doing cross-platform desktop apps.
- jasey 13y ago
  On mac it seemed to me like it was built on chromium. But I didn't do much analysis apart from looking at the process names, I could be very wrong...
- InternalRun 13y ago
  Here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/662121/what-language-or-technology-was-used-to-develop-the-spotify-desktop-application http://stackoverflow.com/questions/662121/what-language-or-t...
  - jakejake 13y ago
    thanks!
AndrewKemendo 13y ago
I like how almost every stage has a trash bin. Sometimes good ideas don't take off and just need to die and die quickly. A true implementation of lean. The disconcerting part (which may have just been left out) is that there is no trash bin in the tweak it stage. That seems fairly standard and how you get into a piece of bloated software that just keeps piling on features without making things easier. It could also be that these ideas are also getting rid of features rather than just adding them but that is not how it read to me.
dokem 13y ago
Unfortunately the quality of the Spotify products is horrendous. I pay the ~$10 dollars a month because I absolutely love their catalogue of songs and artists but their mobile and desktop apps are the absolute crappiest pieces of software that I use on a daily basis. I know this is sounding snarky but the bugs that plague their products are inexcusable.
cuillevel3 13y ago
So what about that Linux client...
brenfrow 13y ago
It would be nice if when I clicked (X) it closed the program... that can't be that hard to fix.
rpc_was_taken 13y ago
How? Badly. I love the large catalog of classical music, but being unable to browse it in a unified way is a pain in the ass. They blame it on the publisher-provided metadata, but it's not all the publisher's fault. In the iPhone app you cannot read the whole track name, so Imagine finding a certain piece when all you see is: Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc... Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc... Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc... Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc... Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc... Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc... On iTunes, pressing and holding over a song shows the complete track label. They seem to be trapped in a featuritis loop, giving no priority to feature polish.
pilooch 13y ago
Amazed at the very poor quality of their search! I ve setup a search engine for a service that then links to spotify when the song is available. With use of proper phonetic filters etc... we were able to get excellent relevance. I do not understand how spotify works internally to let this unattended. Other than that, good music ;)

63 points by bernatfp 13y ago

jseban 13y ago

TL;DR: they hire an "agile consultant" to help them...

strictfp 13y ago
This particular agile consultant is pretty well-known and really good at what he does, so I don't see what you are getting at.

namelezz 13y ago

Look like waterfall.

kosso 13y ago

Nice! An image in there bears a startling resemblance to an image I did in 2005 to try and describe what I do as a "createc" : http://www.flickr.com/photos/81073195@N00/2829444578/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/81073195@N00/2829444578/

Kiro 13y ago

Considering the number of talented people at Spotify I'm constantly surprised by the lack of quality in their products. For some reason they are unable to leverage the talent pool.

thenmar 13y ago
Can you give some examples? I'm pretty happy with Spotify, and I've found the Discover tool very useful. I still read music blogs and forums, but Discover finds me about 1 really good, yet-unheard group in every 30 I try. In my experience, that's only a little less signal than the music blogs I use which are curated by humans with similar tastes to mine.
- jorde 13y ago
  Absolutely agree with OP, Spotify has a serious problem in product quality. Few examples: * Totally inconsistent design - I think they are now rolling out a complete redesign to address this * The current website was absolutely clueless of states when first released (i.e. showing signup buttons for logged in users) * HTML views in the app shows/loads incorrect data ...and the list goes on. I started using Spotify when it was still invite-only in Northern Europe and converted into paying customer when the Android app came out (2009 fall I think?) but switched to Rdio recently due to all the problems with the service. The underlying streaming tech is rock solid but everything else seemed to go down hill release after a release.
  - Dewie 13y ago
    > * The current website was absolutely clueless of states when first released (i.e. showing signup buttons for logged in users) I think the website keeps urging me to upgrade to premium when I'm logged in, even though I've had premium for years...
- secstate 13y ago
  I would also add that, sadly, rdio has not kept up with Spotify's library. It also seems built less around the user's interest and more to get new music in front of people. Probably great for the artist's reps, but when Drake and 7 Days of Funk shows up under Heavy Rotation and I've never listened to anything resembling either, they've already failed. And while I applaud their attempts at a native wrapper around HTML5, you can hardly claim that Rdio has "nailed it" with regards to their native app. It's a whole different product.
  - brajkovic 13y ago
    I'm not sure who you're replying to or if I'm reading your post right, but Rdio's mobile app is not a native wrapper around HTML5, it's built on top of Xamarin's stack, which provides API wrappers around the native platform.
    - 13y ago
cloverich 13y ago
I swapped my Spotify subscription for a Google Music subscription a couple weeks ago for the percieved lack of development. I also seriously miss the album view that they removed (why?) and refuse to re-implement[1] - I frequently make album based playlists, and not having the album covers to group songs by is a pretty big usability issue for me (not just a "nifty trick" as they labeled it...). Compared to Spotify, what I like better about Google Music: 1. Much better Android client (faster, better UI) 2. Collection and My Albums features 3. Can quickly make a playlist from a radio station based on a song (which can be downloaded to my mobile phone) 4. Can upload music I own that is not in the catalog 5. Lots of top / key albums by Genre and Sub-genre - have found lots of new music since switching. 6. No facebook activity stream What I miss from Spotify: 1. Having a desktop client (though don't miss as much as I thought I would) 2. Some music missing (only 2 artist so far, and I own the albums so I guess its only kind-of an issue) [1]:http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Please-restore-View-as-Album-List-feature/idi-p/368022 http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Please-restore...

cantbecool 13y ago

The largest issue with Spotify is the max bitrate they use for non-subscribers. Oh, yeah, I'm just going to deal with your ads for variable quality, sure.

nodata 13y ago
That's not an issue, that's freemium. You can pay if you want to.

jacobkg 13y ago

If you liked this article, you would probably enjoy a previous one about how Spotify scales teams: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1018963/Articles/SpotifyScaling.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1018963/Articles/Spotify...

meritt 13y ago

I cancelled my two-year Spotify membership when I finally reached my breaking point with them continually removing key features.

zzzmarcus 13y ago
What are they removing? I find that they're constantly adding more and more. They're recommendations particularly just keep improving.

secstate 13y ago

I find it funny how polarized folks seem, especially with regards to what Spotify is doing wrong. But I suppose when you mess with someone's music you're gonna tend to draw the ire when things don't work exactly as they are supposed. We can't all whip the llama's ass, I suppose ;-) I especially remember the nerds I grew up with at the height of the Ripping Era of music, where we all had our own way to organize everything. I was always flabbergasted at folks like my roommate in college that just had every song in a big "Music" folder and then had the tracks arranged just so in Winamp, hehe.

slimshady 13y ago

No intentions to spread FUD but Spotify fails to even remember that I like my playlists to be sorted by recency of addition. I always have to manual click their tab to sort it on mobile app.

kevinchen 13y ago
They do have lots of quality issues with their software -- I'm not sure why anyone would want to build products like them. Once, they had a Flash video of a concert on the first tab of their app that was impossible to stop playing. The best you could do was play your music loudly over it.

jakejake 13y ago

Does anybody know what technology is used for the Spotify desktop apps? I was poking around to see if I could figure it out. It seems like something perhaps written in C with a hybrid of widget toolkit and HTML. I was just curious because I'm always interested to see how other people are doing cross-platform desktop apps.

jasey 13y ago
On mac it seemed to me like it was built on chromium. But I didn't do much analysis apart from looking at the process names, I could be very wrong...
InternalRun 13y ago
Here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/662121/what-language-or-technology-was-used-to-develop-the-spotify-desktop-application http://stackoverflow.com/questions/662121/what-language-or-t...
- jakejake 13y ago
  thanks!

AndrewKemendo 13y ago

I like how almost every stage has a trash bin. Sometimes good ideas don't take off and just need to die and die quickly. A true implementation of lean. The disconcerting part (which may have just been left out) is that there is no trash bin in the tweak it stage. That seems fairly standard and how you get into a piece of bloated software that just keeps piling on features without making things easier. It could also be that these ideas are also getting rid of features rather than just adding them but that is not how it read to me.

dokem 13y ago

Unfortunately the quality of the Spotify products is horrendous. I pay the ~$10 dollars a month because I absolutely love their catalogue of songs and artists but their mobile and desktop apps are the absolute crappiest pieces of software that I use on a daily basis. I know this is sounding snarky but the bugs that plague their products are inexcusable.

cuillevel3 13y ago

So what about that Linux client...

brenfrow 13y ago

It would be nice if when I clicked (X) it closed the program... that can't be that hard to fix.

rpc_was_taken 13y ago

How? Badly. I love the large catalog of classical music, but being unable to browse it in a unified way is a pain in the ass. They blame it on the publisher-provided metadata, but it's not all the publisher's fault. In the iPhone app you cannot read the whole track name, so Imagine finding a certain piece when all you see is: Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc... Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc... Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc... Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc... Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc... Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc... On iTunes, pressing and holding over a song shows the complete track label. They seem to be trapped in a featuritis loop, giving no priority to feature polish.

pilooch 13y ago

Amazed at the very poor quality of their search! I ve setup a search engine for a service that then links to spotify when the song is available. With use of proper phonetic filters etc... we were able to get excellent relevance. I do not understand how spotify works internally to let this unattended. Other than that, good music ;)