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lexicap / vtt /episode_029_small.vtt
Shubham Gupta
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WEBVTT
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The following is a conversation with Gustav Sonastrom.
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He's the chief research and development officer at Spotify,
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leading their product design, data, technology, and engineering teams.
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As I've said before, in my research and in life in general,
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I love music, listening to it and creating it.
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And using technology, especially personalization through machine learning
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to enrich the music discovery and listening experience.
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That is what Spotify has been doing for years, continually innovating,
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defining how we experience music as a society in a digital age.
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That's what Gustav and I talk about among many other topics,
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including our shared appreciation of the movie True Romance,
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in my view, one of the great movies of all time.
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This is the Artificial Intelligence podcast.
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If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, give five stars on iTunes,
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support on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter at Lex Freedman,
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spelled F R I D M A N.
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And now here's my conversation with Gustav Sonastrom.
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Spotify has over 50 million songs in its catalog.
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So let me ask the all important question.
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I feel like you're the right person to ask.
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What is the definitive greatest song of all time?
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It varies for me, personally.
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So you can't speak definitively for everyone?
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I wouldn't believe very much in machine learning if I did,
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right? Because everyone had the same taste.
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So for you, what is you have to pick? What is the song?
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All right. So it's it's pretty easy for me.
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There is this song called You're So Cool,
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Hans Zimmer, a soundtrack to True Romance.
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It was a movie that made a big impression on me,
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and it's kind of been following me through my life.
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Actually, had to play at my wedding.
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I sat with the organist and helped him play it on an organ,
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which was a pretty pretty interesting experience.
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That is probably my I would say top three movie of all time.
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Yeah, this is an incredible movie.
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Yeah. And it came out during my formative years.
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And as I've discovered in music,
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you shape your music taste during those years.
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So it definitely affected me quite a bit.
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Did it affect you in any other kind of way?
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Well, the movie itself affected me back then.
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It was a big part of culture.
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I didn't really adopt any characters from the movie,
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but it was it was a great story of love.
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It's fantastic actors.
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And and really, I didn't even know who Hans Zimmer was at the time,
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but fantastic music.
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And so that song has followed me.
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And the movie actually has followed me throughout my life.
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That was Quentin Tarantino, actually,
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I think directed or produced that.
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So it's not Stairway to Heaven or Bohemian Rhapsody.
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It's those are those are great.
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They're not my personal favorites,
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but I've realized that people have different tastes.
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And that's that's a big part of what we do.
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Well, for me, I don't have to stick with Stairway to Heaven.
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So 35,000 years ago, I looked this up on Wikipedia,
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flute like instruments started being used in caves
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as part of hunting rituals and primitive cultural gatherings,
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things like that.
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This is the birth of music.
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Since then, we had a few folks, Beethoven, Elvis, Beatles,
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Justin Bieber, of course, Drake.
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So in your view, let's start like high level philosophical.
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What is the purpose of music on this planet of ours?
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I think music has many different purposes.
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I think there's there's certainly a big purpose,
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which is the same as much of entertainment,
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which is escapism and to be able to live in some sort of
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other mental state for a while.
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But I also think you have the the opposite of escaping,
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which is to help you focus on something you are actually doing.
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As I think people use music as a tool to to tune the brain
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to the activities that they are actually doing.
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And it's kind of like in one sense,
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maybe it's the rawest signal.
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If you if you think about the brain as neural networks,
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it's maybe the most efficient hack we can do
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to actually actively tune it into some state that you want to be.
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You can do it in other ways.
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You can tell stories to put people in a certain mood,
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but music is probably very effective
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to get to a certain mood very fast.
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You know, there's a there's a social component historically
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to music where people listen to music together.
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I was just thinking about this,
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that to me, and you mentioned machine learning,
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but to me personally, music is a really private thing.
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Like I'm speaking for myself.
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I listen to music like almost nobody knows
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the kind of things I have in my library,
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except people who are really close to me
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and they really only know a certain percentage.
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There's like some weird stuff
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that I'm almost probably embarrassed by, right?
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It's called the guilty pleasures, right?
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Everyone has the guilty pleasures, yeah.
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Hopefully they're not too bad.
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For me, it's personal.
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Do you think of music as something that's social
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or as something that's personal?
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Or does it vary?
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So I think it's the same answer that you use it for both.
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We've thought a lot about this
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during these 10 years at Spotify, obviously.
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In one sense, as you said, music is incredibly social.
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You go to concerts and so forth.
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On the other hand, it is your escape
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and everyone has these things that are very personal to them.
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So what we've found is that when it comes to,
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to most people claim that they have a friend or two
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that they are heavily inspired by and that they listen to.
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So I actually think music is very social,
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but in a smaller group setting,
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it's an intimate form of, it's an intimate relationship.
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It's not something that you necessarily share broadly.
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Now at concerts, you can argue you do,
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but then you've gathered a lot of people
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that you have something in common with.
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I think this broadcast sharing of music
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is something we tried on social networks and so forth,
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but it turns out that people aren't super interested in
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what their friends listen to.
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They're interested in understanding
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if they have something in common perhaps with a friend,
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but not just as information.
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Right, that's really interesting.
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I was just thinking that this morning listening to Spotify,
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I really have a pretty intimate relationship with Spotify,
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with my playlists.
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I've had them for many years now
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and they've grown with me together.
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There's an intimate relationship you have
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with a library of music that you've developed.
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And we'll talk about different ways we can play with that.
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Can you do the impossible task
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and try to give a history of music listening
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from your perspective, from before the internet
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and after the internet?
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And just kind of everything leading up to streaming
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with Spotify and so on.
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I'll try, it could be a 100 year podcast.
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Yeah.
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I'll try to do a brief version.
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There are some things that I think are very interesting
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during the history of music,
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which is that before recorded music,
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to be able to enjoy music,
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you actually had to be where the music was produced
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because you couldn't record it and time shift it, right?
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Creation and consumption had to happen at the same time,
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basically concerts.
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And so you either had to get to the nearest village
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to listen to music.
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And while that was cumbersome
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and it severely limited the distribution of music,
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it also had some different qualities,
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which was that the creator could always interact
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with the audience.
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It was always live.
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And also there was no time cap on the music.
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So I think it's not a coincidence
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that these early classical works,
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they're much longer than the three minutes.
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The three minutes came in as a restriction
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of the first wax disc that could only contain
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a three minute song on one side, right?
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So actually the recorded music severely limited the,
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or put constraints.
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I won't say limit.
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I mean, constraints are often good,
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but it put very hard constraints on the music format.
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So you kind of said, like instead of doing this opus
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of like many, you know, tens of minutes or something,
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now you get three and a half minutes
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because then you're out of wax on this disc.
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But in return, you get an amazing distribution.
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Your reach will widen, right?
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Just on that point real quick,
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without the mass scale distribution,
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there's a scarcity component where you kind of look forward to it.
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We had that, it's like the Netflix versus HBO Game of Thrones.
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You like wait for the event because you can't really listen to it.
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So you like look forward to it and then it's,
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you derive perhaps more pleasure
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because it's more rare for you to listen to particular piece.
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You think there's value to that scarcity?
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Yeah, I think that that is definitely a thing.
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And there's always this component of
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if you have something in infinite amount,
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so will you value it as much?
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Probably not.
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Humanity is always seeking some, is relative.
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So you're always seeking something you didn't have
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and when you have it, you don't appreciate it as much.
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So I think that's probably true.
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But I think that's why concerts exist.
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So you can actually have both.
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But I think net, if you couldn't listen to music
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in your car driving, that'd be worse.
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That cost will be bigger than the benefit of the anticipation,
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I think, that you would have.
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So, yeah, it started with live concerts.
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Then it's being able to, you know, the photograph invented, right?
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You start to be able to record music.
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Exactly.
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So then you got this massive distribution
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that made it possible to create two things.
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I think, first of all, cultural phenomenons.
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They probably need distribution.
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Distribution to be able to happen.
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But it also opened access to, you know, for a new kind of artist.
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So you started to have these phenomenons,
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like Beatles and Elvis and so forth,
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that would really a function of distribution, I think.
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Obviously, of talent and innovation,
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but there was also taking a component.
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And of course, the next big innovation to come along
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was radio, broadcast radio.
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And I think radio is interesting
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because it started not as a music medium.
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It started as an information medium for news.
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And then radio needed to find something to fill the time with
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so that they could honestly play more ads and make more money.
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And music was free.
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So then you had this massive distribution
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where you could program to people.
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I think those things, that ecosystem,
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is what created the ability for hits.
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But it was also a very broadcast medium.
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So you would tend to get these massive, massive hits,
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but maybe not such a long tail.
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In terms of choice of everybody listening to the same stuff.
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Yeah. And as you said, I think there are some social benefits to that.
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I think, for example, there is a high statistical chance
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that if I talk about the latest episode of Game of Thrones,
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we have something to talk about just statistically.
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In the age of individual choice, maybe some of that goes away.
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So I do see the value of shared cultural components.
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But I also obviously love personalization.
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And so let's catch this up to the internet.
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So maybe Napster.
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Well, first of all, there's like MP3s.
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Exactly. There's tape, CDs.
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There was a digitalization of music with a CD, really.
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It was physical distribution, but the music became digital.
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And so they were files, but basically boxed software,
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to use a software analogy.
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And then you could start downloading these files.
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And I think there are two interesting things that happened
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back to music used to be longer
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before it was constrained by the distribution medium.
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I don't think that was a coincidence.
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And then really the only music genre to have developed mostly after
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music was a file again on the internet is EDM.
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And EDM is often much longer than the traditional music.
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I think it's interesting to think about the fact that
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music is no longer constrained in minutes per song or something.
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It's a legacy of an old distribution technology.
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And you see some of this new music that breaks the format,
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not so much as I would have expected actually by now,
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but it still happens.
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So first of all, I don't really know what EDM is.
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Electronic dance music, you could say.
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Avicii was one of the biggest in this genre.
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So the main constraint is of time,
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something like three, four, five minutes song.
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So you could have songs that were eight minutes,
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10 minutes, and so forth.
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Because it started as a digital product
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that you downloaded, so you didn't have this constraint anymore.
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So I think it's something really interesting
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that I don't think has fully happened yet.
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We're kind of jumping ahead a little bit to where we are,
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but I think there's tons of formal innovation in music
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that should happen now, that couldn't happen
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when you needed to really adhere to the distribution constraints.
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If you didn't adhere to that, you would get no distribution.
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So Björk, for example, an Icelandic artist,
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she made a full iPad app as an album.
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That was very expensive, even though the App Store
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has great distribution, she gets nowhere near the distribution
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versus staying within the three minute format.
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So I think now that music is fully digital
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inside these streaming services,
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there is the opportunity to change the format again
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and allow creators to be much more creative
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without limiting their distribution ability.
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That's interesting that you're right.
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You're right, it's surprising that we don't see
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that taking advantage more often.
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It's almost like the constraints of the distribution
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from the 50s and 60s have molded the culture
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to where we want the three to five minute song,
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that anything else, not just...
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So we want the song as consumers and as artists,
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like, because I write a lot of music
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and I never even thought about writing something
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longer than 10 minutes.
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It's really interesting that those constraints...
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Because all your training data
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has been three and a half minutes long, right?
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It's right.
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Okay, so yeah, digitization of data led to then MP3s.
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Yeah, so I think you had this file then
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that was distributed physically,
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but then you had the components of digital distribution
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and then the internet happened and there was this vacuum
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where you had a format that could be digitally shipped
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but there was no business model.
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And then all these pirate networks happened.
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Napster and in Sweden, Pirate Bay,
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which was one of the biggest.
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And I think from a consumer point of view,
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which leads up to the inception of Spotify
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from a consumer point of view,
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consumers for the first time had this access model to music
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where they could, without any marginal cost,
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they could try different tracks.
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You could use music in new ways.
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There was no marginal cost.
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And that was a fantastic consumer experience.
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They have access to all the music ever made.
15:31.840 --> 15:33.280
I think it was fantastic.
15:33.840 --> 15:35.600
But it was also horrible for artists
15:35.600 --> 15:37.280
because there was no business model around it.
15:37.280 --> 15:38.640
So they didn't make any money.
15:38.640 --> 15:43.840
So the user need almost drove the user interface
15:43.840 --> 15:45.280
before there was a business model.
15:45.760 --> 15:47.440
And then there were these download stores
15:48.640 --> 15:50.400
that allowed you to download files.
15:50.400 --> 15:51.920
Which was a solution,
15:51.920 --> 15:53.920
but it didn't solve the access problem.
15:53.920 --> 15:55.760
There was still a marginal cost of 99 cents
15:55.760 --> 15:57.040
to try one more track.
15:57.040 --> 16:00.400
And I think that heavily limits how you listen to music.
16:00.400 --> 16:04.480
The example I always give is in Spotify,
16:04.480 --> 16:07.440
a huge amount of people listen to music while they sleep,
16:07.440 --> 16:09.120
while they go to sleep and while they sleep.
16:10.000 --> 16:12.160
If that costed you 99 cents per three minutes,
16:12.160 --> 16:13.760
you probably wouldn't do that.
16:13.760 --> 16:15.760
And you would be much less adventurous
16:15.760 --> 16:17.920
if there was a real dollar cost to explore music.
16:17.920 --> 16:20.880
So the access model is interesting in that
16:20.880 --> 16:22.320
it changes your music behavior.
16:22.880 --> 16:25.600
You can take much more risk
16:25.600 --> 16:27.120
because there's no marginal cost to it.
16:28.240 --> 16:30.480
Maybe let me linger on piracy for a second.
16:30.480 --> 16:32.880
Because I find, especially coming from Russia,
16:33.840 --> 16:36.080
piracy is something that's very interesting.
16:36.640 --> 16:41.520
To me, not me of course ever,
16:41.520 --> 16:47.040
but I have friends who've partook in piracy
16:47.040 --> 16:52.960
of music, software, TV shows, sporting events.
16:53.680 --> 16:55.760
And usually, to me, what that shows
16:55.760 --> 16:59.040
is not that they can actually pay the money
16:59.600 --> 17:01.040
and they're not trying to save money.
17:01.920 --> 17:04.000
They're choosing the best experience.
17:05.120 --> 17:07.520
So what to me, piracy shows
17:07.520 --> 17:09.920
is a business opportunity in all these domains.
17:09.920 --> 17:12.480
And that's where I think you're right.
17:12.480 --> 17:14.880
Spotify stepped in is basically,
17:14.880 --> 17:17.120
piracy is an experience.
17:17.120 --> 17:19.600
You can explore, find music you like.
17:20.240 --> 17:24.320
And actually, the interface of piracy is horrible.
17:24.960 --> 17:26.800
Because it's, I mean...
17:26.800 --> 17:30.960
Bad metadata, long download times, all kinds of stuff.
17:30.960 --> 17:33.040
And what Spotify does is basically
17:34.880 --> 17:36.160
first, rewards artists,
17:36.160 --> 17:38.560
and second, makes the experience
17:38.560 --> 17:40.080
of exploring music much better.
17:40.080 --> 17:43.920
I mean, the same is true, I think, for movies and so on.
17:43.920 --> 17:46.960
Piracy reveals, in the software space, for example,
17:46.960 --> 17:49.760
I'm a huge user and fan of Adobe products.
17:50.480 --> 17:53.600
And there was much more incentive
17:53.600 --> 17:55.360
to pirate Adobe products
17:55.360 --> 17:57.680
before they went to a monthly subscription plan.
17:58.320 --> 18:01.040
And now, all of the said friends
18:01.600 --> 18:05.040
that used to pirate Adobe products that I know,
18:05.040 --> 18:08.000
now actually pay, gladly, for the monthly subscription.
18:08.000 --> 18:09.280
Yeah, I think you're right.
18:09.280 --> 18:11.520
I think it's a sign of an opportunity
18:11.520 --> 18:12.960
for product development.
18:12.960 --> 18:17.760
And that sometimes there's a product market fit
18:17.760 --> 18:21.360
before there's a business model fit in product development.
18:21.360 --> 18:23.200
I think that's a sign of it.
18:23.200 --> 18:25.760
In Sweden, I think it was a bit of both.
18:25.760 --> 18:29.680
There was a culture where we even had
18:29.680 --> 18:32.000
a political party called the Pirate Party.
18:32.000 --> 18:35.120
And this was during the time when people said that
18:35.120 --> 18:36.640
information should be free.
18:36.640 --> 18:39.360
It was somehow wrong to charge for ones and zeros.
18:39.360 --> 18:42.480
So I think people felt that artists
18:42.480 --> 18:44.720
should probably make some money somehow else
18:44.720 --> 18:46.240
in concerts or something.
18:46.240 --> 18:49.280
So at least in Sweden, it was part really social acceptance
18:49.280 --> 18:51.120
even at the political level.
18:51.120 --> 18:55.120
But that also forced Spotify to compete with free,
18:57.120 --> 18:58.800
which I don't think could have happened
18:58.800 --> 19:00.080
anywhere else in the world.
19:00.080 --> 19:02.960
The music industry needed to be doing bad enough
19:02.960 --> 19:04.400
to take that risk.
19:04.400 --> 19:06.240
And Sweden was like the perfect testing ground.
19:06.240 --> 19:10.960
It had government funded high bandwidth, low latency broadband,
19:10.960 --> 19:12.880
which meant that the product would work.
19:12.880 --> 19:15.520
And it was also, there was no music revenue anyway.
19:15.520 --> 19:16.800
So they were kind of like,
19:16.800 --> 19:19.040
I don't think this is going to work, but why not?
19:20.320 --> 19:22.640
So this product is one that I don't think could have happened
19:22.640 --> 19:24.800
in America, the world's largest music market, for example.
19:24.800 --> 19:27.040
So how do you compete with free?
19:27.040 --> 19:29.840
Because that's an interesting world of the internet
19:29.840 --> 19:32.960
where most people don't like to pay for things.
19:32.960 --> 19:37.120
So Spotify steps in and tries to, yes, compete with free.
19:37.120 --> 19:38.320
How do you do it?
19:38.320 --> 19:39.760
So I think two things.
19:39.760 --> 19:43.360
One is people are starting to pay for things on the internet.
19:43.360 --> 19:46.560
I think one way to think about it was that advertising
19:46.560 --> 19:48.560
was the first business model
19:48.560 --> 19:50.560
because no one would put the credit card on the internet.
19:50.560 --> 19:52.720
Transactional with Amazon was the second.
19:52.720 --> 19:54.320
And maybe subscription is the third.
19:54.320 --> 19:57.520
And if you look offline, subscription is the biggest of those.
19:57.520 --> 19:59.120
So that may still happen.
19:59.120 --> 20:00.320
I think people are starting to pay.
20:00.320 --> 20:03.120
But definitely back then, we needed to compete with free.
20:03.120 --> 20:04.960
And the first thing you need to do is obviously
20:04.960 --> 20:06.960
to lower the price to free.
20:06.960 --> 20:10.160
And then you need to be better somehow.
20:10.160 --> 20:13.760
And the way that Spotify was better was on the user experience,
20:13.760 --> 20:19.760
on the actual performance, the latency of, you know,
20:19.760 --> 20:24.560
even if you had high band with broadband,
20:24.560 --> 20:27.360
it would still take you 30 seconds to a minute
20:27.360 --> 20:28.960
to download one of these tracks.
20:28.960 --> 20:31.360
So the Spotify experience of starting within the
20:31.360 --> 20:34.560
perceptual limit of immediacy, about 250 milliseconds,
20:34.560 --> 20:37.360
meant that the whole trick was,
20:37.360 --> 20:39.760
it felt as if you had downloaded all of Pirate Bay.
20:39.760 --> 20:40.960
It was on your hard drive.
20:40.960 --> 20:43.360
It was that fast, even though it wasn't.
20:43.360 --> 20:44.960
And it was still free.
20:44.960 --> 20:48.960
But somehow you were actually still being a legal citizen.
20:48.960 --> 20:52.960
That was the trick that Spotify managed to pull off.
20:52.960 --> 20:56.560
So I've actually heard you say this or write this.
20:56.560 --> 20:58.960
And I was surprised that I wasn't aware of it,
20:58.960 --> 21:00.560
because I just took it for granted.
21:00.560 --> 21:02.560
You know, whenever an awesome thing comes along,
21:02.560 --> 21:04.560
you just like, oh, of course it has to be this way.
21:04.560 --> 21:06.560
That's exactly right.
21:06.560 --> 21:08.560
That it felt like the entire world's libraries
21:08.560 --> 21:12.560
at my fingertips because of that latency being reduced.
21:12.560 --> 21:16.560
What was the technical challenge in reducing the late?
21:16.560 --> 21:20.560
So there was a group of really, really talented engineers.
21:20.560 --> 21:22.560
One of them called Ludwig Strigius.
21:22.560 --> 21:26.560
He wrote the, actually from Gothenburg,
21:26.560 --> 21:30.560
he wrote the initial, the UTorrent Clients,
21:30.560 --> 21:32.560
which is kind of an interesting backstory to Spotify,
21:32.560 --> 21:36.560
you know, that we have one of the top developers
21:36.560 --> 21:38.560
from BitTorrent Clients as well.
21:38.560 --> 21:42.560
So he wrote UTorrent, the world's smallest BitTorrent Clients.
21:42.560 --> 21:47.560
And then he was acquired very early by Daniel and Martin,
21:47.560 --> 21:50.560
who founded Spotify, and they actually sold the UTorrent Client
21:50.560 --> 21:52.560
to BitTorrent, but kept Ludwig.
21:52.560 --> 21:58.560
So Spotify had a lot of experience within peer to peer networking.
21:58.560 --> 22:02.560
So the original innovation was a distribution innovation,
22:02.560 --> 22:05.560
where Spotify built an end to end media distribution system.
22:05.560 --> 22:08.560
Up until only a few years ago, we actually hosted all the music ourselves.
22:08.560 --> 22:10.560
So we had both the server side and the client,
22:10.560 --> 22:14.560
and that meant that we could do things such as having a peer to peer solution
22:14.560 --> 22:17.560
to use local caching on the client side,
22:17.560 --> 22:20.560
because back then the world was mostly desktop.
22:20.560 --> 22:24.560
But we could also do things like hack the TCP protocols,
22:24.560 --> 22:28.560
things like Nagle's algorithm for kind of exponential back off,
22:28.560 --> 22:32.560
or ramp up and just go full throttle and optimize for latency
22:32.560 --> 22:34.560
at the cost of bandwidth.
22:34.560 --> 22:38.560
And all of this end to end control meant that we could do
22:38.560 --> 22:41.560
an experience that felt like a step change.
22:41.560 --> 22:45.560
These days, we actually are on on GCP.
22:45.560 --> 22:48.560
We don't host our own stuff, and everyone is really fast these days.
22:48.560 --> 22:50.560
So that was the initial competitive advantage,
22:50.560 --> 22:52.560
but then obviously you have to move on over time.
22:52.560 --> 22:55.560
And that was over 10 years ago, right?
22:55.560 --> 22:58.560
That was in 2008, the product was launched in Sweden.
22:58.560 --> 23:00.560
It was in a beta, I think, 2007.
23:00.560 --> 23:02.560
And it was on the desktop, right?
23:02.560 --> 23:03.560
It was desktop only.
23:03.560 --> 23:04.560
There's no phone.
23:04.560 --> 23:05.560
There was no phone.
23:05.560 --> 23:08.560
The iPhone came out in 2008,
23:08.560 --> 23:11.560
but the App Store came out one year later, I think.
23:11.560 --> 23:14.560
So the writing was on the wall, but there was no phone yet.
23:14.560 --> 23:19.560
You've mentioned that people would use Spotify
23:19.560 --> 23:20.560
to discover the songs they like,
23:20.560 --> 23:23.560
and then they would torrent those songs
23:23.560 --> 23:26.560
so they can copy it to their phone.
23:26.560 --> 23:27.560
Just hilarious.
23:27.560 --> 23:28.560
Exactly.
23:28.560 --> 23:29.560
Or not torrent.
23:29.560 --> 23:34.560
Seriously, piracy does seem to be a good guide
23:34.560 --> 23:36.560
for business models.
23:36.560 --> 23:37.560
Video content.
23:37.560 --> 23:40.560
As far as I know, Spotify doesn't have video content.
23:40.560 --> 23:42.560
Well, we do have music videos,
23:42.560 --> 23:44.560
and we do have videos on the service,
23:44.560 --> 23:46.560
but the way we think about ourselves is that
23:46.560 --> 23:48.560
we're an audio service,
23:48.560 --> 23:52.560
and we think that if you look at the amount of time
23:52.560 --> 23:53.560
that people spend on audio,
23:53.560 --> 23:56.560
it's actually very similar to the amount of time
23:56.560 --> 23:57.560
that people spend on video.
23:57.560 --> 24:01.560
So the opportunity should be equally big,
24:01.560 --> 24:02.560
but today it's not at all valued.
24:02.560 --> 24:04.560
Video is valued much higher.
24:04.560 --> 24:07.560
So we think it's basically completely undervalued.
24:07.560 --> 24:09.560
We think of ourselves as an audio service,
24:09.560 --> 24:12.560
but within that audio service, I think video
24:12.560 --> 24:13.560
can make a lot of sense.
24:13.560 --> 24:16.560
I think when you're discovering an artist,
24:16.560 --> 24:17.560
you probably do want to see them
24:17.560 --> 24:18.560
and understand who they are,
24:18.560 --> 24:20.560
to understand their identity.
24:20.560 --> 24:21.560
Do you want to see that video every time?
24:21.560 --> 24:22.560
No.
24:22.560 --> 24:24.560
90% of the time the phone is going to be in your pocket.
24:24.560 --> 24:26.560
For podcasters, you use video.
24:26.560 --> 24:28.560
I think that can make a ton of sense.
24:28.560 --> 24:29.560
So we do have video,
24:29.560 --> 24:31.560
but we're an audio service where,
24:31.560 --> 24:33.560
think of it as we call it internally,
24:33.560 --> 24:34.560
backgroundable video.
24:34.560 --> 24:35.560
Video that is helpful,
24:35.560 --> 24:38.560
but isn't the driver of the narrative.
24:38.560 --> 24:42.560
I think also if you look at YouTube,
24:42.560 --> 24:43.560
the way people,
24:43.560 --> 24:47.560
there's quite a few folks who listen to music on YouTube.
24:47.560 --> 24:48.560
So in some sense,
24:48.560 --> 24:52.560
YouTube is a bit of a competitor to Spotify,
24:52.560 --> 24:55.560
which is very strange to me that people use YouTube
24:55.560 --> 24:56.560
to listen to music.
24:56.560 --> 24:59.560
They play essentially the music videos, right?
24:59.560 --> 25:02.560
But don't watch the videos and put it in their pocket.
25:02.560 --> 25:07.560
Well, I think it's similar to what
25:07.560 --> 25:11.560
strangely maybe it's similar to what we were
25:11.560 --> 25:13.560
for the Piracy Networks,
25:13.560 --> 25:17.560
where YouTube for historical reasons
25:17.560 --> 25:20.560
have a lot of music videos.
25:20.560 --> 25:21.560
So you use,
25:21.560 --> 25:23.560
people use YouTube for a lot of the discovery part
25:23.560 --> 25:24.560
of the process, I think.
25:24.560 --> 25:26.560
But then it's not a really good
25:26.560 --> 25:28.560
sort of quote unquote MP3 player,
25:28.560 --> 25:29.560
because it doesn't even background.
25:29.560 --> 25:31.560
Then you have to keep the app in the foreground.
25:31.560 --> 25:32.560
So the consumption,
25:32.560 --> 25:34.560
it's not a good consumption tool,
25:34.560 --> 25:35.560
but it's a decently good discovery.
25:35.560 --> 25:37.560
I mean, I think YouTube is fantastic products.
25:37.560 --> 25:39.560
And I use it for all kinds of purposes.
25:39.560 --> 25:40.560
That's true.
25:40.560 --> 25:42.560
If I were to admit something,
25:42.560 --> 25:44.560
I do use YouTube a little bit for the discovery,
25:44.560 --> 25:46.560
to assist in the discovery process of songs.
25:46.560 --> 25:48.560
And then if I like it,
25:48.560 --> 25:50.560
I'll add it to Spotify.
25:50.560 --> 25:51.560
But that's okay.
25:51.560 --> 25:52.560
That's okay with us.
25:52.560 --> 25:53.560
Okay.
25:53.560 --> 25:55.560
So sorry, we're jumping around a little bit.
25:55.560 --> 25:58.560
So this kind of incredible,
25:58.560 --> 25:59.560
you look at Napster,
25:59.560 --> 26:01.560
you look at the early days of Spotify.
26:01.560 --> 26:02.560
How do you,
26:02.560 --> 26:04.560
one fascinating point is how do you grow
26:04.560 --> 26:05.560
a user base?
26:05.560 --> 26:07.560
So you're there in Sweden.
26:07.560 --> 26:09.560
You have an idea.
26:09.560 --> 26:12.560
I saw the initial sketches that looked terrible.
26:12.560 --> 26:14.560
How do you grow a user base
26:14.560 --> 26:18.560
from a few folks to millions?
26:18.560 --> 26:21.560
I think there are a bunch of tactical answers.
26:21.560 --> 26:22.560
So first of all,
26:22.560 --> 26:23.560
I think you need a great product.
26:23.560 --> 26:25.560
I don't think you take a bad product
26:25.560 --> 26:29.560
and market it to be successful.
26:29.560 --> 26:30.560
So you need a great product.
26:30.560 --> 26:31.560
Sorry to interrupt,
26:31.560 --> 26:33.560
but it's a totally new way to listen to music.
26:33.560 --> 26:34.560
So it's not just,
26:34.560 --> 26:38.560
did people realize immediately that Spotify is a great product?
26:38.560 --> 26:39.560
I think they did.
26:39.560 --> 26:41.560
So back to the point of piracy,
26:41.560 --> 26:44.560
it was a totally new way to listen to music legally,
26:44.560 --> 26:47.560
but people had been used to the access model in Sweden
26:47.560 --> 26:49.560
and the rest of the world for a long time through piracy.
26:49.560 --> 26:51.560
So one way to think about Spotify,
26:51.560 --> 26:53.560
it was just legal and fast piracy.
26:53.560 --> 26:55.560
And so people have been using it for a long time.
26:55.560 --> 26:57.560
So they weren't alien to it.
26:57.560 --> 27:00.560
They didn't really understand how it could be legal
27:00.560 --> 27:03.560
because it seemed too fast and too good to be true,
27:03.560 --> 27:05.560
which I think is a great product proposition
27:05.560 --> 27:07.560
if you can be too good to be true.
27:07.560 --> 27:09.560
But what I saw again and again
27:09.560 --> 27:10.560
was people showing each other,
27:10.560 --> 27:12.560
clicking the song, showing how fast it started
27:12.560 --> 27:14.560
and say, can you believe this?
27:14.560 --> 27:17.560
So I really think it was about speed.
27:17.560 --> 27:20.560
Then we also had an invite program
27:20.560 --> 27:22.560
that was really meant for scaling
27:22.560 --> 27:24.560
because we hosted our own servers.
27:24.560 --> 27:26.560
We needed to control scaling,
27:26.560 --> 27:28.560
but that built a lot of expectation
27:28.560 --> 27:30.560
and I don't want to say hype
27:30.560 --> 27:34.560
because hype implies that it wasn't true.
27:34.560 --> 27:37.560
Expectations, excitement around the product.
27:37.560 --> 27:40.560
And we replicated that when we launched in the US.
27:40.560 --> 27:42.560
We also built up an invite only program first.
27:42.560 --> 27:44.560
There are lots of tactics,
27:44.560 --> 27:46.560
but I think you need a great product
27:46.560 --> 27:48.560
to solve some problem.
27:48.560 --> 27:51.560
And basically the key innovation,
27:51.560 --> 27:54.560
there was technology, but on a meta level,
27:54.560 --> 27:56.560
the innovation was really the access model
27:56.560 --> 27:58.560
versus the ownership model.
27:58.560 --> 28:00.560
And that was tricky.
28:00.560 --> 28:04.560
A lot of people said that they wanted to own their music.
28:04.560 --> 28:07.560
They would never kind of rent it or borrow it.
28:07.560 --> 28:09.560
But I think the fact that we had a free tier
28:09.560 --> 28:12.560
which meant that you get to keep this music for life as well
28:12.560 --> 28:14.560
helped quite a lot.
28:14.560 --> 28:17.560
So this is an interesting psychological point
28:17.560 --> 28:19.560
that maybe you can speak to.
28:19.560 --> 28:21.560
It was a big shift for me.
28:21.560 --> 28:25.560
It's almost like to go to therapy for this.
28:25.560 --> 28:29.560
I think I would describe my early listening experience
28:29.560 --> 28:31.560
and I think a lot of my friends do,
28:31.560 --> 28:33.560
is basically hoarding music.
28:33.560 --> 28:36.560
As you're slowly one song by one song,
28:36.560 --> 28:37.560
or maybe albums,
28:37.560 --> 28:40.560
gathering a collection of music that you love.
28:40.560 --> 28:42.560
And you own it.
28:42.560 --> 28:44.560
Especially with CDs or tape,
28:44.560 --> 28:46.560
you physically had it.
28:46.560 --> 28:48.560
And what Spotify,
28:48.560 --> 28:50.560
what I had to come to grips with,
28:50.560 --> 28:52.560
and it was kind of liberating actually,
28:52.560 --> 28:55.560
is to throw away all the music.
28:55.560 --> 28:58.560
I've had this therapy session with lots of people.
28:58.560 --> 29:00.560
And I think the mental trick is,
29:00.560 --> 29:02.560
so actually we've seen the user data.
29:02.560 --> 29:03.560
When Spotify started,
29:03.560 --> 29:05.560
a lot of people did the exact same thing.
29:05.560 --> 29:06.560
They started hoarding,
29:06.560 --> 29:09.560
as if the music would disappear.
29:09.560 --> 29:11.560
Almost the equivalent of downloading.
29:11.560 --> 29:14.560
And so we had these playlists that had limits
29:14.560 --> 29:16.560
of a few hundred thousand tracks
29:16.560 --> 29:18.560
and we figured no one would ever.
29:18.560 --> 29:19.560
Well, they do.
29:19.560 --> 29:21.560
It's in hundreds and hundreds of thousands of tracks.
29:21.560 --> 29:23.560
And to this day,
29:23.560 --> 29:25.560
some people want to actually save,
29:25.560 --> 29:26.560
quote unquote,
29:26.560 --> 29:27.560
and play the entire catalog.
29:27.560 --> 29:29.560
But I think that the therapy session
29:29.560 --> 29:31.560
goes something like,
29:31.560 --> 29:34.560
instead of throwing away your music,
29:34.560 --> 29:36.560
if you took your files
29:36.560 --> 29:39.560
and you stored them in a locker at Google,
29:39.560 --> 29:40.560
it'd be a streaming service.
29:40.560 --> 29:41.560
It's just that in that locker,
29:41.560 --> 29:43.560
you have all the world's music now for free.
29:43.560 --> 29:44.560
So instead of giving away your music,
29:44.560 --> 29:46.560
you got all the music.
29:46.560 --> 29:47.560
It's yours.
29:47.560 --> 29:48.560
You could think of it as having a copy
29:48.560 --> 29:50.560
of the world's catalog there forever.
29:50.560 --> 29:53.560
So you actually got more music instead of less.
29:53.560 --> 29:56.560
It's just that you just took that hard disk
29:56.560 --> 29:59.560
and you sent it to someone who stored it for you.
29:59.560 --> 30:01.560
And once you go through that mental journey of,
30:01.560 --> 30:03.560
like, still my files, they're just over there.
30:03.560 --> 30:06.560
And I just have 40 million or 50 million or something now.
30:06.560 --> 30:08.560
Then people are like, okay, that's good.
30:08.560 --> 30:10.560
The problem is, I think,
30:10.560 --> 30:12.560
because you paid us a subscription,
30:12.560 --> 30:14.560
if we hadn't had the free tier,
30:14.560 --> 30:15.560
where you would feel like,
30:15.560 --> 30:16.560
even if I don't want to pay anymore,
30:16.560 --> 30:18.560
I still get to keep them.
30:18.560 --> 30:19.560
You keep your playlists forever.
30:19.560 --> 30:21.560
They don't disappear even though you stop paying.
30:21.560 --> 30:23.560
I think that was really important.
30:23.560 --> 30:25.560
If we would have started as, you know,
30:25.560 --> 30:27.560
you can put in all this time,
30:27.560 --> 30:29.560
but if you stop paying, you lose all your work.
30:29.560 --> 30:31.560
I think that would have been a big challenge
30:31.560 --> 30:33.560
and was the big challenge for a lot of our competitors.
30:33.560 --> 30:35.560
That's another reason why I think the free tier
30:35.560 --> 30:36.560
is really important,
30:36.560 --> 30:38.560
that people need to feel the security
30:38.560 --> 30:40.560
that the work they put in, it will never disappear,
30:40.560 --> 30:42.560
even if they decide not to pay.
30:42.560 --> 30:44.560
I like how you put the work you put in.
30:44.560 --> 30:46.560
I actually stopped even thinking of it that way.
30:46.560 --> 30:49.560
Spotify taught me to just enjoy music
30:49.560 --> 30:53.560
as opposed to what I was doing before,
30:53.560 --> 30:57.560
which is like, in an unhealthy way, hoarding music.
30:57.560 --> 31:00.560
Which I found that because I was doing that,
31:00.560 --> 31:03.560
I was listening to a small selection of songs
31:03.560 --> 31:06.560
way too much to where I was getting sick of them.
31:06.560 --> 31:09.560
Whereas Spotify, the more liberating kind of approach,
31:09.560 --> 31:11.560
I was just enjoying, of course,
31:11.560 --> 31:13.560
I listened to Stairway to Heaven over and over,
31:13.560 --> 31:16.560
but because of the extra variety,
31:16.560 --> 31:18.560
I don't get as sick of them.
31:18.560 --> 31:21.560
There's an interesting statistic I saw,
31:21.560 --> 31:24.560
so Spotify has, maybe you can correct me,
31:24.560 --> 31:27.560
but over 50 million songs, tracks,
31:27.560 --> 31:31.560
and over 3 billion playlists.
31:31.560 --> 31:35.560
So 50 million songs and 3 billion playlists.
31:35.560 --> 31:38.560
60 times more playlists than songs.
31:38.560 --> 31:40.560
What do you make of that?
31:40.560 --> 31:43.560
So the way I think about it is that
31:43.560 --> 31:48.560
from a statistical machine learning point of view,
31:48.560 --> 31:50.560
you have all these,
31:50.560 --> 31:52.560
if you want to think about reinforcement learning,
31:52.560 --> 31:54.560
you have this state space of all the tracks,
31:54.560 --> 31:58.560
and you can take different journeys through this world.
31:58.560 --> 32:02.560
And I think of these as like people
32:02.560 --> 32:05.560
helping themselves and each other,
32:05.560 --> 32:08.560
creating interesting vectors through this space of tracks.
32:08.560 --> 32:11.560
And then it's not so surprising that across
32:11.560 --> 32:14.560
many tens of millions of atomic units,
32:14.560 --> 32:17.560
there will be billions of paths that make sense.
32:17.560 --> 32:20.560
And we're probably pretty quite far away from
32:20.560 --> 32:22.560
having found all of them.
32:22.560 --> 32:25.560
So kind of our job now is,
32:25.560 --> 32:28.560
when Spotify started, it was really a search box
32:28.560 --> 32:30.560
that was for the time pretty powerful,
32:30.560 --> 32:33.560
and then I like to refer to this programming language
32:33.560 --> 32:35.560
called playlisting, where if you,
32:35.560 --> 32:37.560
as you probably were pretty good at music,
32:37.560 --> 32:39.560
you knew your new releases, you knew your back catalog,
32:39.560 --> 32:41.560
you knew you're starting with the heaven,
32:41.560 --> 32:43.560
you could create a soundtrack for yourself
32:43.560 --> 32:45.560
using this playlisting tool that's like metaprogramming language
32:45.560 --> 32:47.560
for music to soundtrack your life.
32:47.560 --> 32:49.560
And people who are good at music,
32:49.560 --> 32:51.560
it's back to how do you scale the product.
32:51.560 --> 32:53.560
For people who are good at music,
32:53.560 --> 32:55.560
that wasn't actually enough.
32:55.560 --> 32:57.560
If you had the catalog and a good search tool,
32:57.560 --> 32:59.560
and you can create your own sessions,
32:59.560 --> 33:02.560
you could create really good a soundtrack for your entire life.
33:02.560 --> 33:05.560
Probably perfectly personalized because you did it yourself.
33:05.560 --> 33:07.560
The problem was, many people aren't that good at music.
33:07.560 --> 33:09.560
They just can't spend the time.
33:09.560 --> 33:11.560
Even if you're very good at music, it's going to be hard to keep up.
33:11.560 --> 33:14.560
So what we did to try to scale this
33:14.560 --> 33:17.560
was to essentially try to build,
33:17.560 --> 33:19.560
you can think of them as agents,
33:19.560 --> 33:21.560
this friend that some people had
33:21.560 --> 33:23.560
that helped them navigate this music catalog.
33:23.560 --> 33:25.560
That's what we're trying to do for you.
33:25.560 --> 33:30.560
But also, there is something like
33:30.560 --> 33:34.560
200 million active users on Spotify.
33:34.560 --> 33:38.560
So from the machine learning perspective,
33:38.560 --> 33:42.560
you have these 200 million people plus.
33:42.560 --> 33:45.560
They're creating,
33:45.560 --> 33:48.560
it's really interesting to think of playlists
33:48.560 --> 33:52.560
as, I don't know if you meant it that way,
33:52.560 --> 33:54.560
but it's almost like a programming language.
33:54.560 --> 33:59.560
It's released a trace of exploration
33:59.560 --> 34:03.560
of those individual agents, the listeners.
34:03.560 --> 34:06.560
And you have all this new tracks coming in.
34:06.560 --> 34:12.560
So it's a fascinating space that is ripe for machine learning.
34:12.560 --> 34:18.560
So how can playlists be used as data
34:18.560 --> 34:21.560
in terms of machine learning
34:21.560 --> 34:24.560
to help Spotify organize the music?
34:24.560 --> 34:27.560
So we found in our data,
34:27.560 --> 34:30.560
not surprising that people who playlisted lots,
34:30.560 --> 34:32.560
they retained much better.
34:32.560 --> 34:34.560
We had a great experience.
34:34.560 --> 34:37.560
And so our first attempt was to playlist for users.
34:37.560 --> 34:40.560
And so we acquired this company called Tunigo of editors
34:40.560 --> 34:43.560
and professional playlisters
34:43.560 --> 34:47.560
and kind of leveraged the maximum of human intelligence
34:47.560 --> 34:50.560
to help build kind of these vectors
34:50.560 --> 34:53.560
through the track space for people.
34:53.560 --> 34:55.560
And that brought in the product.
34:55.560 --> 34:57.560
Then the obvious next,
34:57.560 --> 34:59.560
and we used statistical means
34:59.560 --> 35:02.560
where they could see when they created a playlist,
35:02.560 --> 35:04.560
how did that playlist perform?
35:04.560 --> 35:06.560
They could see skips of the songs,
35:06.560 --> 35:08.560
they could see how the songs perform,
35:08.560 --> 35:10.560
and they manually iterated the playlist
35:10.560 --> 35:13.560
to maximize performance for a large group of people.
35:13.560 --> 35:16.560
But there were never enough editors to playlists for you personally.
35:16.560 --> 35:18.560
So the promise of machine learning
35:18.560 --> 35:20.560
was to go from kind of group personalization,
35:20.560 --> 35:23.560
using editors and tools and statistics
35:23.560 --> 35:25.560
to individualization.
35:25.560 --> 35:27.560
And then what's so interesting
35:27.560 --> 35:29.560
about three billion playlists we have is,
35:29.560 --> 35:31.560
the truth is we lucked out.
35:31.560 --> 35:33.560
This was not a priori strategy,
35:33.560 --> 35:35.560
as is often the case.
35:35.560 --> 35:37.560
It looks really smart in hindsight,
35:37.560 --> 35:39.560
but it was dumb luck.
35:39.560 --> 35:41.560
We looked at these playlists
35:41.560 --> 35:44.560
and we had some people in the company,
35:44.560 --> 35:46.560
a person named Erik Bernhardtson,
35:46.560 --> 35:48.560
who was really good at machine learning
35:48.560 --> 35:51.560
already back then, in like 2007, 2008.
35:51.560 --> 35:54.560
Back then it was mostly collaborative filtering and so forth,
35:54.560 --> 35:57.560
we realized that what this is,
35:57.560 --> 36:00.560
is people are grouping tracks for themselves
36:00.560 --> 36:02.560
that have some semantic meaning to them.
36:02.560 --> 36:04.560
And then they actually label it
36:04.560 --> 36:06.560
with a playlist name as well.
36:06.560 --> 36:09.560
So in a sense, people were grouping tracks
36:09.560 --> 36:11.560
along semantic dimensions and labeling them.
36:11.560 --> 36:14.560
And so could you use that information
36:14.560 --> 36:18.560
to find that latent embedding?
36:18.560 --> 36:21.560
And so we started playing around
36:21.560 --> 36:23.560
with collaborative filtering
36:23.560 --> 36:26.560
and we saw tremendous success with it.
36:26.560 --> 36:30.560
Basically trying to extract some of these dimensions.
36:30.560 --> 36:33.560
And if you think about it, it's not surprising at all.
36:33.560 --> 36:35.560
It would be quite surprising
36:35.560 --> 36:37.560
if playlists were actually random,
36:37.560 --> 36:39.560
if they had no semantic meaning.
36:39.560 --> 36:42.560
For most people, they grouped these tracks for some reason.
36:42.560 --> 36:45.560
So we just happened across this incredible data set
36:45.560 --> 36:48.560
where people had taken these tens of millions of tracks
36:48.560 --> 36:52.560
and grouped them along different semantic vectors.
36:52.560 --> 36:55.560
And the semantics being outside the individual user,
36:55.560 --> 36:57.560
so it's some kind of universal.
36:57.560 --> 36:59.560
There's a universal embedding
36:59.560 --> 37:02.560
that holds across people on this earth.
37:02.560 --> 37:05.560
Yes, I do think that the embeddings you find
37:05.560 --> 37:08.560
are going to be reflective of the people who play listed.
37:08.560 --> 37:11.560
So if you have a lot of indie lovers who play list
37:11.560 --> 37:14.560
your embedding is going to perform better there.
37:14.560 --> 37:17.560
But what we found was that, yes,
37:17.560 --> 37:20.560
there were these latent similarities.
37:20.560 --> 37:22.560
They were very powerful.
37:22.560 --> 37:25.560
And it was interesting because
37:25.560 --> 37:28.560
I think that the people who play listed the most initially
37:28.560 --> 37:31.560
were the so called music aficionados
37:31.560 --> 37:33.560
who were really into music.
37:33.560 --> 37:35.560
And they often had a certain...
37:35.560 --> 37:39.560
Their taste was often geared towards a certain type of music.
37:39.560 --> 37:41.560
And so what surprised us,
37:41.560 --> 37:43.560
if you look at the problem from the outside,
37:43.560 --> 37:46.560
you might expect that the algorithms
37:46.560 --> 37:49.560
would start performing best with mainstreamers first
37:49.560 --> 37:52.560
and now feels like an easier problem to solve mainstream taste
37:52.560 --> 37:54.560
than really particular taste.
37:54.560 --> 37:56.560
It was a complete opposite for us.
37:56.560 --> 37:58.560
The recommendations performed fantastically
37:58.560 --> 38:01.560
for people who saw themselves as having very unique taste.
38:01.560 --> 38:04.560
That's probably because all of them play listed
38:04.560 --> 38:06.560
and they didn't perform so well for mainstreamers.
38:06.560 --> 38:09.560
They actually thought they were a bit too particular
38:09.560 --> 38:11.560
and unorthodox.
38:11.560 --> 38:13.560
So we had a complete opposite of what we expected.
38:13.560 --> 38:15.560
Success within the hardest problem first
38:15.560 --> 38:18.560
and then had to try to scale to more mainstream recommendations.
38:18.560 --> 38:21.560
So you've also acquired
38:21.560 --> 38:23.560
Echo Nest
38:23.560 --> 38:25.560
that analyzes song data.
38:25.560 --> 38:27.560
So
38:27.560 --> 38:29.560
in your view, maybe you can talk about
38:29.560 --> 38:31.560
so what kind of data is there
38:31.560 --> 38:33.560
from a machine learning perspective?
38:33.560 --> 38:35.560
There's a huge amount,
38:35.560 --> 38:37.560
what we're talking about, play listing
38:37.560 --> 38:39.560
and just user data
38:39.560 --> 38:42.560
of what people are listening to, the playlist they're constructing
38:42.560 --> 38:44.560
and so on.
38:44.560 --> 38:47.560
And then there is the actual data within a song
38:47.560 --> 38:49.560
what makes a song,
38:49.560 --> 38:52.560
I don't know, the actual waveforms.
38:52.560 --> 38:55.560
How do you mix the two?
38:55.560 --> 38:57.560
How much values are in each?
38:57.560 --> 38:59.560
To me, it seems like user data
38:59.560 --> 39:02.560
is a romantic notion
39:02.560 --> 39:05.560
that the song itself would contain useful information
39:05.560 --> 39:07.560
but if I were to guess,
39:07.560 --> 39:09.560
user data would be much more powerful.
39:09.560 --> 39:11.560
Playlists would be much more powerful.
39:11.560 --> 39:14.560
Yeah, so we use both.
39:14.560 --> 39:17.560
Our biggest success initially was with
39:17.560 --> 39:20.560
playlist data without understanding
39:20.560 --> 39:22.560
anything about the structure of the song.
39:22.560 --> 39:24.560
But when we acquired the Echo Nest,
39:24.560 --> 39:26.560
they had the inverse problem.
39:26.560 --> 39:28.560
They actually didn't have any play data.
39:28.560 --> 39:30.560
They were a provider of recommendations
39:30.560 --> 39:32.560
but they didn't actually have any play data.
39:32.560 --> 39:35.560
So they looked at the structure of songs
39:35.560 --> 39:37.560
sonically
39:37.560 --> 39:39.560
and they looked at Wikipedia for cultural references
39:39.560 --> 39:41.560
and so forth, right?
39:41.560 --> 39:43.560
And did a lot of NLU and so forth.
39:43.560 --> 39:45.560
They had that skill into the company
39:45.560 --> 39:48.560
and combined our user data
39:48.560 --> 39:52.560
with their content based.
39:52.560 --> 39:54.560
So you can think of it as we were user based
39:54.560 --> 39:56.560
and they were content based in their recommendations.
39:56.560 --> 39:58.560
And we combined those two.
39:58.560 --> 40:00.560
And for some cases where you have a new song
40:00.560 --> 40:02.560
that has no play data,
40:02.560 --> 40:04.560
obviously you have to try to go by
40:04.560 --> 40:06.560
either who the artist is
40:06.560 --> 40:09.560
or the sonic information in the song
40:09.560 --> 40:11.560
or what it's similar to.
40:11.560 --> 40:13.560
And we do a lot in both.
40:13.560 --> 40:15.560
But I would say yes.
40:15.560 --> 40:17.560
The user data captures things that
40:17.560 --> 40:19.560
have to do with culture in the greater society
40:19.560 --> 40:21.560
that you would never see
40:21.560 --> 40:23.560
in the content itself.
40:23.560 --> 40:25.560
But that said, we have seen
40:25.560 --> 40:27.560
we have a research lab in Paris
40:27.560 --> 40:29.560
when we can talk about
40:29.560 --> 40:31.560
more about that on
40:31.560 --> 40:33.560
kind of machine learning on the creator side.
40:33.560 --> 40:35.560
What it can do for creators, not just for the consumers.
40:35.560 --> 40:37.560
But where we looked at
40:37.560 --> 40:39.560
how does the structure of a song actually affect
40:39.560 --> 40:41.560
the listening behavior.
40:41.560 --> 40:43.560
And it turns out that
40:43.560 --> 40:45.560
we can predict things like skips
40:45.560 --> 40:47.560
based on the song itself.
40:47.560 --> 40:49.560
We could say that
40:49.560 --> 40:51.560
maybe you should move that chorus a bit
40:51.560 --> 40:53.560
because your skip is going to go up here.
40:53.560 --> 40:55.560
There is a lot of latent structure in the music
40:55.560 --> 40:57.560
which is not surprising
40:57.560 --> 40:59.560
because it is some sort of mind hack.
40:59.560 --> 41:01.560
So there should be structure.
41:01.560 --> 41:03.560
That's probably what we respond to.
41:03.560 --> 41:05.560
You just blew my mind actually
41:05.560 --> 41:07.560
from the creator perspective.
41:07.560 --> 41:09.560
That probably most creators
41:09.560 --> 41:11.560
are not taken advantage of.
41:11.560 --> 41:13.560
So I have recently
41:13.560 --> 41:15.560
got to interact with a few
41:15.560 --> 41:17.560
folks, YouTubers
41:17.560 --> 41:19.560
who are
41:19.560 --> 41:21.560
obsessed with this idea
41:21.560 --> 41:23.560
of what do I
41:23.560 --> 41:25.560
do to make sure people
41:25.560 --> 41:27.560
keep watching the video.
41:27.560 --> 41:29.560
And then you look at the analytics
41:29.560 --> 41:31.560
of which point do people turn it off
41:31.560 --> 41:33.560
and so on. First of all,
41:33.560 --> 41:35.560
I don't think that's healthy.
41:35.560 --> 41:37.560
It's because you can do it a little too much.
41:37.560 --> 41:39.560
But it is a really
41:39.560 --> 41:41.560
powerful tool for helping the creative process.
41:41.560 --> 41:43.560
You just made me
41:43.560 --> 41:45.560
realize you could do the same thing for
41:45.560 --> 41:47.560
creation of music.
41:47.560 --> 41:49.560
So is that something you've looked
41:49.560 --> 41:51.560
into?
41:51.560 --> 41:53.560
Can you speak
41:53.560 --> 41:55.560
to how much opportunity there is for that kind of thing?
41:55.560 --> 41:57.560
I listened to the podcast
41:57.560 --> 41:59.560
with Zirash and I thought it was
41:59.560 --> 42:01.560
fantastic and reacted to the same thing
42:01.560 --> 42:03.560
where he said he posted something
42:03.560 --> 42:05.560
in the morning, immediately
42:05.560 --> 42:07.560
watched the feedback where the drop off was
42:07.560 --> 42:09.560
and then responded to that in the afternoon.
42:09.560 --> 42:11.560
Which is quite different
42:11.560 --> 42:13.560
from how people make podcasts, for example.
42:13.560 --> 42:15.560
The feedback loop is almost
42:15.560 --> 42:17.560
non existent. So if we
42:17.560 --> 42:19.560
back out at one level, I think
42:19.560 --> 42:21.560
actually both for music
42:21.560 --> 42:23.560
and podcasts, which we also
42:23.560 --> 42:25.560
do at Spotify, I think there's
42:25.560 --> 42:27.560
tremendous opportunity just
42:27.560 --> 42:29.560
for the creation workflow.
42:29.560 --> 42:31.560
I think it's really interesting
42:31.560 --> 42:33.560
speaking to you, because you're
42:33.560 --> 42:35.560
a musician, a developer and a
42:35.560 --> 42:37.560
podcaster, if you think about those
42:37.560 --> 42:39.560
three different roles,
42:39.560 --> 42:41.560
if you make the leap as a musician,
42:41.560 --> 42:43.560
if you think about it
42:43.560 --> 42:45.560
as a software tool chain, really,
42:45.560 --> 42:47.560
your door with the stems,
42:47.560 --> 42:49.560
that's the IDE, right?
42:49.560 --> 42:51.560
That's where you work in source code format
42:51.560 --> 42:53.560
with what you're creating.
42:53.560 --> 42:55.560
Then you sit around and you play with that
42:55.560 --> 42:57.560
and when you're happy you compile that thing into
42:57.560 --> 42:59.560
some sort of, you know, AAC,
42:59.560 --> 43:01.560
or something, you do that because
43:01.560 --> 43:03.560
you get distribution. There are so many run times
43:03.560 --> 43:05.560
for that MP3 across the world in car stairs and stuff.
43:05.560 --> 43:07.560
So you kind of compile this executable and you ship it out
43:07.560 --> 43:09.560
in kind of an old fashioned
43:09.560 --> 43:11.560
box software analogy.
43:11.560 --> 43:13.560
And then you hope for the best,
43:13.560 --> 43:15.560
right? But as
43:15.560 --> 43:17.560
a software developer,
43:17.560 --> 43:19.560
you would never do that. First you go
43:19.560 --> 43:21.560
on GitHub and you collaborate with other creators.
43:21.560 --> 43:23.560
And then, you know,
43:23.560 --> 43:25.560
you think it would be crazy to just ship one version
43:25.560 --> 43:27.560
of your software without doing an A.B. test,
43:27.560 --> 43:29.560
without any feedback loop.
43:29.560 --> 43:31.560
And then, issue tracking.
43:31.560 --> 43:33.560
Exactly. And then you would look at the
43:33.560 --> 43:35.560
feedback loops and try to optimize that thing, right?
43:35.560 --> 43:37.560
So I think if you think
43:37.560 --> 43:39.560
about it as a very specific software tool chain,
43:39.560 --> 43:41.560
it looks
43:41.560 --> 43:43.560
quite arcane.
43:43.560 --> 43:45.560
The tools that a music creator has versus
43:45.560 --> 43:47.560
what a software developer has.
43:47.560 --> 43:49.560
So that's kind of how we think about it.
43:49.560 --> 43:51.560
Why wouldn't
43:51.560 --> 43:53.560
a music creator
43:53.560 --> 43:55.560
have something like GitHub where you could collaborate
43:55.560 --> 43:57.560
much more easily? So we bought
43:57.560 --> 43:59.560
this company called Soundtrap,
43:59.560 --> 44:01.560
which has a kind of
44:01.560 --> 44:03.560
Google Docs for music approach where you can
44:03.560 --> 44:05.560
collaborate with other people on the kind of
44:05.560 --> 44:07.560
source code format with Stems.
44:07.560 --> 44:09.560
And I think introducing things like
44:09.560 --> 44:11.560
AI tools there to help you
44:11.560 --> 44:13.560
as you're creating music,
44:13.560 --> 44:15.560
both in
44:15.560 --> 44:17.560
helping you
44:19.560 --> 44:21.560
put a component to your music,
44:21.560 --> 44:23.560
like drums or something,
44:23.560 --> 44:25.560
help you
44:25.560 --> 44:27.560
master and mix automatically,
44:27.560 --> 44:29.560
help you understand how this track will perform.
44:29.560 --> 44:31.560
Exactly what you would expect as a software
44:31.560 --> 44:33.560
developer. I think it makes a lot of sense.
44:33.560 --> 44:35.560
And I think the same goes for
44:35.560 --> 44:37.560
a podcaster. I think podcasters will expect
44:37.560 --> 44:39.560
to have the same kind of feedback loop that Sirosh
44:39.560 --> 44:41.560
has. Like,
44:41.560 --> 44:43.560
why wouldn't you? Maybe it's not healthy, but
44:43.560 --> 44:45.560
Sorry, I wanted to
44:45.560 --> 44:47.560
criticize the fact because you can overdo it.
44:47.560 --> 44:49.560
Because a lot of the
44:49.560 --> 44:51.560
and we're in a new era
44:51.560 --> 44:53.560
of that.
44:53.560 --> 44:55.560
So you can become
44:55.560 --> 44:57.560
addicted to it and
44:57.560 --> 44:59.560
therefore
44:59.560 --> 45:01.560
what people say you become a slave to the YouTube
45:01.560 --> 45:03.560
algorithm.
45:03.560 --> 45:05.560
It's always a danger
45:05.560 --> 45:07.560
of a new technology as opposed to
45:07.560 --> 45:09.560
say if you're creating a song
45:09.560 --> 45:11.560
becoming too obsessed
45:11.560 --> 45:13.560
about the
45:13.560 --> 45:15.560
intro riff to the song
45:15.560 --> 45:17.560
that keeps people listening versus
45:17.560 --> 45:19.560
actually the entirety of the creation process. It's a balance.
45:19.560 --> 45:21.560
But the fact that
45:21.560 --> 45:23.560
there's zero, I mean you're blowing my mind right now
45:23.560 --> 45:25.560
because you're
45:25.560 --> 45:27.560
completely right that there's no
45:27.560 --> 45:29.560
signal whatsoever. There's no feedback
45:29.560 --> 45:31.560
whatsoever on the creation process
45:31.560 --> 45:33.560
and musical podcasting
45:33.560 --> 45:35.560
almost at all.
45:35.560 --> 45:37.560
And are you saying
45:37.560 --> 45:39.560
that Spotify
45:39.560 --> 45:41.560
is hoping to help create tools
45:41.560 --> 45:43.560
to, not tools, but
45:43.560 --> 45:45.560
No, tools actually.
45:45.560 --> 45:47.560
Actually tools for creators.
45:47.560 --> 45:49.560
Absolutely.
45:49.560 --> 45:51.560
So we have
45:51.560 --> 45:53.560
we've made some acquisitions the last few years around music creation
45:53.560 --> 45:55.560
this company called Soundtrap
45:55.560 --> 45:57.560
which is a digital audio workstation
45:57.560 --> 45:59.560
that is browser based
45:59.560 --> 46:01.560
and their focus was really the Google Docs approach.
46:01.560 --> 46:03.560
We can collaborate with people much more easily
46:03.560 --> 46:05.560
than you could in previous tools.
46:05.560 --> 46:07.560
So we have some of these tools
46:07.560 --> 46:09.560
that we're working with that we want to make accessible
46:09.560 --> 46:11.560
and then we can connect it
46:11.560 --> 46:13.560
with our consumption data.
46:13.560 --> 46:15.560
We can create this feedback loop where
46:15.560 --> 46:17.560
we could help you understand
46:17.560 --> 46:19.560
we could help you create
46:19.560 --> 46:21.560
and help you understand how you will perform.
46:21.560 --> 46:23.560
We also acquired this other company
46:23.560 --> 46:25.560
with a podcasting called Anchor
46:25.560 --> 46:27.560
which is one of the biggest podcasting tools
46:27.560 --> 46:29.560
mobile focused.
46:29.560 --> 46:31.560
So really focused on simple creation
46:31.560 --> 46:33.560
or easy access to creation
46:33.560 --> 46:35.560
but that also gives us this feedback loop
46:35.560 --> 46:37.560
and even before that
46:37.560 --> 46:39.560
we invested in something called
46:39.560 --> 46:41.560
Spotify for Artists
46:41.560 --> 46:43.560
and Spotify for Podcasters
46:43.560 --> 46:45.560
which is an app that you can download
46:45.560 --> 46:47.560
you can verify that you are that creator
46:47.560 --> 46:49.560
and then you get
46:49.560 --> 46:51.560
things that
46:51.560 --> 46:53.560
software developers have had for years.
46:53.560 --> 46:55.560
You can see where
46:55.560 --> 46:57.560
if you look at your podcast for example on Spotify
46:57.560 --> 46:59.560
or a song that you released
46:59.560 --> 47:01.560
you can see how it's performing
47:01.560 --> 47:03.560
which citizen it's performing in
47:03.560 --> 47:05.560
who's listening to it, what's the demographic breakup
47:05.560 --> 47:07.560
so similar in the sense that
47:07.560 --> 47:09.560
you can understand how you're actually doing on the platform.
47:09.560 --> 47:11.560
So we definitely want
47:11.560 --> 47:13.560
to build tools. I think
47:13.560 --> 47:15.560
you also interviewed
47:15.560 --> 47:17.560
the head of research for Adobe
47:17.560 --> 47:19.560
and I think that's
47:19.560 --> 47:21.560
back to Photoshop that you like.
47:21.560 --> 47:23.560
I think that's an interesting analogy as well.
47:23.560 --> 47:25.560
Photoshop I think has been
47:25.560 --> 47:27.560
very innovative in helping
47:27.560 --> 47:29.560
photographers and artists
47:29.560 --> 47:31.560
and I think there should be
47:31.560 --> 47:33.560
the same kind of tools for
47:33.560 --> 47:35.560
music creators where you could get
47:35.560 --> 47:37.560
AI assistants for example as you're creating music
47:37.560 --> 47:39.560
as you can do
47:39.560 --> 47:41.560
with Adobe where you can
47:41.560 --> 47:43.560
I want a sky over here and you can get help creating that sky.
47:43.560 --> 47:45.560
The really fascinating thing is
47:45.560 --> 47:47.560
what Adobe
47:47.560 --> 47:49.560
doesn't have
47:49.560 --> 47:51.560
is a distribution for the content
47:51.560 --> 47:53.560
you create. So you don't have
47:53.560 --> 47:55.560
the data of if I create
47:55.560 --> 47:57.560
if I
47:57.560 --> 47:59.560
you know whatever creation I make
47:59.560 --> 48:01.560
in Photoshop or Premiere
48:01.560 --> 48:03.560
I can't get like immediate feedback
48:03.560 --> 48:05.560
like I can on YouTube for example about
48:05.560 --> 48:07.560
the way people are responding
48:07.560 --> 48:09.560
and if Spotify is creating those tools
48:09.560 --> 48:11.560
that's a really exciting
48:11.560 --> 48:13.560
actually world
48:13.560 --> 48:15.560
but
48:15.560 --> 48:17.560
let's talk a little about podcasts
48:17.560 --> 48:19.560
so I have trouble
48:19.560 --> 48:21.560
talking to one person
48:21.560 --> 48:23.560
so it's a bit terrifying
48:23.560 --> 48:25.560
and kind of hard to fathom
48:25.560 --> 48:27.560
but on average
48:27.560 --> 48:29.560
60 to 100,000
48:29.560 --> 48:31.560
people will listen to this episode
48:31.560 --> 48:33.560
okay so
48:33.560 --> 48:35.560
it's intimidating
48:35.560 --> 48:37.560
so I hosted on Blueberry
48:37.560 --> 48:39.560
I don't know if I'm pronouncing
48:39.560 --> 48:41.560
that correctly actually
48:41.560 --> 48:43.560
it looks like most people listen to it on Apple
48:43.560 --> 48:45.560
Podcast, Cast Box and Pocket
48:45.560 --> 48:47.560
Cast and only about
48:47.560 --> 48:49.560
a thousand
48:49.560 --> 48:51.560
listen on Spotify
48:51.560 --> 48:53.560
just my podcast right
48:53.560 --> 48:55.560
so
48:55.560 --> 48:57.560
where
48:57.560 --> 48:59.560
do you see a time when Spotify
48:59.560 --> 49:01.560
will dominate this so Spotify
49:01.560 --> 49:03.560
is relatively new
49:03.560 --> 49:05.560
in podcasting
49:05.560 --> 49:07.560
so yeah in podcasting
49:07.560 --> 49:09.560
what's the deal with podcasting in Spotify
49:09.560 --> 49:11.560
how serious
49:11.560 --> 49:13.560
is Spotify about podcasting
49:13.560 --> 49:15.560
do you see a time where everybody would listen
49:15.560 --> 49:17.560
to you know probably
49:17.560 --> 49:19.560
a huge amount of people, majority perhaps
49:19.560 --> 49:21.560
listen to music on Spotify
49:21.560 --> 49:23.560
do you see a time
49:23.560 --> 49:25.560
when the same is true for
49:25.560 --> 49:27.560
podcasting
49:27.560 --> 49:29.560
well I certainly hope so that is our mission
49:29.560 --> 49:31.560
our mission as a company is actually to
49:31.560 --> 49:33.560
enable a million creators to live
49:33.560 --> 49:35.560
off of their art and a billion people inspired
49:35.560 --> 49:37.560
by it and what I think is interesting about that mission
49:37.560 --> 49:39.560
is it actually puts the creators
49:39.560 --> 49:41.560
first even though it started as a
49:41.560 --> 49:43.560
consumer focused company and it says
49:43.560 --> 49:45.560
to be able to live off of their art not just
49:45.560 --> 49:47.560
make some money off of their art as well
49:47.560 --> 49:49.560
so it's quite an ambitious
49:49.560 --> 49:51.560
product and
49:51.560 --> 49:53.560
so we think about creators of all kinds
49:53.560 --> 49:55.560
and
49:55.560 --> 49:57.560
we kind of expanded our mission from
49:57.560 --> 49:59.560
being music to being audio
49:59.560 --> 50:01.560
a while back
50:01.560 --> 50:03.560
and that's not
50:03.560 --> 50:05.560
so much because
50:05.560 --> 50:07.560
we think we made that decision
50:07.560 --> 50:09.560
we think that decision
50:09.560 --> 50:11.560
was made for us
50:11.560 --> 50:13.560
we think the world made that decision
50:13.560 --> 50:15.560
whether we like it or not
50:15.560 --> 50:17.560
when you put in your headphones
50:17.560 --> 50:19.560
you're going to make a choice between
50:19.560 --> 50:21.560
music
50:21.560 --> 50:23.560
and a new episode of
50:23.560 --> 50:25.560
your podcast or something else
50:25.560 --> 50:27.560
we're in that world whether we like it or not
50:27.560 --> 50:29.560
that's how radio work
50:29.560 --> 50:31.560
so we decided that
50:31.560 --> 50:33.560
we think it's about audio you can see the
50:33.560 --> 50:35.560
rights of audio books and so forth
50:35.560 --> 50:37.560
we think audio is this great opportunity
50:37.560 --> 50:39.560
so we decided to enter it and obviously
50:39.560 --> 50:41.560
Apple
50:41.560 --> 50:43.560
and Apple podcast is absolutely
50:43.560 --> 50:45.560
dominating in
50:45.560 --> 50:47.560
podcasting and we didn't have
50:47.560 --> 50:49.560
a single podcast only like two years ago
50:49.560 --> 50:51.560
what we did though was
50:51.560 --> 50:53.560
we
50:53.560 --> 50:55.560
we looked at this and said
50:55.560 --> 50:57.560
bring something to this
50:57.560 --> 50:59.560
we want to do this but back to the original
50:59.560 --> 51:01.560
Spotify we had to do something that consumers actually value
51:03.560 --> 51:05.560
to be able to do this and the reason
51:05.560 --> 51:07.560
we've gone from not existing at all
51:07.560 --> 51:09.560
to being the
51:09.560 --> 51:11.560
quite a wide margin the second largest podcast
51:11.560 --> 51:13.560
consumption
51:13.560 --> 51:15.560
still wide gap to iTunes but we're growing
51:15.560 --> 51:17.560
quite fast
51:17.560 --> 51:19.560
I think it's because when we looked at the consumer
51:19.560 --> 51:21.560
problem
51:21.560 --> 51:23.560
people said surprisingly that they wanted their podcasts
51:23.560 --> 51:25.560
and music in the same
51:25.560 --> 51:27.560
in the same application
51:27.560 --> 51:29.560
so what we did was we took a little bit of a different
51:29.560 --> 51:31.560
approach what we said instead of building a separate podcast
51:31.560 --> 51:33.560
app
51:33.560 --> 51:35.560
we thought is there a consumer problem to solve here
51:35.560 --> 51:37.560
because the others are very successful already
51:37.560 --> 51:39.560
and we thought there was in making a more
51:39.560 --> 51:41.560
seamless experience where you can have your podcasts
51:41.560 --> 51:43.560
and your music
51:43.560 --> 51:45.560
in the same application
51:45.560 --> 51:47.560
because we think it's audio to you
51:47.560 --> 51:49.560
and that has been successful and that meant that
51:49.560 --> 51:51.560
we actually had 200 million people
51:51.560 --> 51:53.560
to offer this to instead of starting from zero
51:53.560 --> 51:55.560
so I think we have a good
51:55.560 --> 51:57.560
chance because we're taking a different approach
51:57.560 --> 51:59.560
than the competition and back to the other thing
51:59.560 --> 52:01.560
I mentioned about
52:01.560 --> 52:03.560
creators
52:03.560 --> 52:05.560
because we're looking at the end to end flow
52:05.560 --> 52:07.560
I think there's a tremendous amount of innovation
52:07.560 --> 52:09.560
to do around podcast as a format
52:09.560 --> 52:11.560
when we have creation tools and consumption
52:11.560 --> 52:13.560
I think we could
52:13.560 --> 52:15.560
start improving what podcasting is
52:15.560 --> 52:17.560
I mean podcast is this
52:17.560 --> 52:19.560
this opaque big like one to
52:19.560 --> 52:21.560
your file
52:21.560 --> 52:23.560
that you're streaming
52:23.560 --> 52:25.560
which it really doesn't make that much sense in 2019
52:25.560 --> 52:27.560
that it's not interactive
52:27.560 --> 52:29.560
there's no feedback loops nothing like that
52:29.560 --> 52:31.560
so I think if we're going to win it's going to have to be
52:31.560 --> 52:33.560
because we build a better product
52:33.560 --> 52:35.560
for creators and for consumers
52:35.560 --> 52:37.560
so we'll see but it's certainly our goal
52:37.560 --> 52:39.560
we have a long way to go
52:39.560 --> 52:41.560
well the creators part is really exciting
52:41.560 --> 52:43.560
you got me hooked there
52:43.560 --> 52:45.560
it's the only stats I have
52:45.560 --> 52:47.560
Blueberry just recently added the stats of
52:47.560 --> 52:49.560
it's listen to the end
52:49.560 --> 52:51.560
or not
52:51.560 --> 52:53.560
and that's like a huge improvement
52:53.560 --> 52:55.560
but that's still
52:55.560 --> 52:57.560
nowhere to where you could possibly
52:57.560 --> 52:59.560
go into statistics
52:59.560 --> 53:01.560
just download the Spotify podcasters up and verify
53:01.560 --> 53:03.560
and then you'll know where people dropped out in this episode
53:03.560 --> 53:05.560
oh wow okay
53:05.560 --> 53:07.560
the moment I started talking
53:07.560 --> 53:09.560
I might be depressed by this
53:09.560 --> 53:11.560
but okay so one
53:11.560 --> 53:13.560
one other question
53:13.560 --> 53:15.560
the original
53:15.560 --> 53:17.560
Spotify for music
53:17.560 --> 53:19.560
and I have a question about
53:19.560 --> 53:21.560
podcasting in this line
53:21.560 --> 53:23.560
is the idea of albums
53:23.560 --> 53:25.560
I have
53:25.560 --> 53:27.560
music aficionados
53:27.560 --> 53:29.560
friends who are really
53:29.560 --> 53:31.560
big fans of music
53:31.560 --> 53:33.560
often really enjoy albums
53:33.560 --> 53:35.560
listening to entire albums of
53:35.560 --> 53:37.560
an artist correct me if I'm wrong
53:37.560 --> 53:39.560
but I feel like
53:39.560 --> 53:41.560
Spotify has helped
53:41.560 --> 53:43.560
replace the idea of an album with playlists
53:43.560 --> 53:45.560
so you create your own albums
53:45.560 --> 53:47.560
that's kind of the way
53:47.560 --> 53:49.560
at least I've experienced music
53:49.560 --> 53:51.560
and I've really enjoyed it that way
53:51.560 --> 53:53.560
one of the things that was missing
53:53.560 --> 53:55.560
in podcasting for me
53:55.560 --> 53:57.560
I don't know if it's missing I don't know
53:57.560 --> 53:59.560
it's an open question for me
53:59.560 --> 54:01.560
but the way I listen to podcasts is the way I would listen to albums
54:01.560 --> 54:03.560
so I take
54:03.560 --> 54:05.560
Joe Rogan Experience
54:05.560 --> 54:07.560
and that's an album and I listen
54:07.560 --> 54:09.560
I put that on
54:09.560 --> 54:11.560
and I listen one episode after the next
54:11.560 --> 54:13.560
and there's a sequence and so on
54:13.560 --> 54:15.560
is there room for
54:15.560 --> 54:17.560
doing
54:17.560 --> 54:19.560
what Spotify did for music
54:19.560 --> 54:21.560
but creating
54:21.560 --> 54:23.560
playlists
54:23.560 --> 54:25.560
sort of this kind of playlisting
54:25.560 --> 54:27.560
idea of breaking apart from podcasting
54:27.560 --> 54:29.560
from individual
54:29.560 --> 54:31.560
podcasts and creating kind of
54:31.560 --> 54:33.560
this interplay
54:33.560 --> 54:35.560
or have you thought about that
54:35.560 --> 54:37.560
it's a great question so I think in
54:37.560 --> 54:39.560
music
54:39.560 --> 54:41.560
you're right basically you bought an album
54:41.560 --> 54:43.560
so it was like you bought a small catalog of
54:43.560 --> 54:45.560
10 tracks
54:45.560 --> 54:47.560
again it was actually a lot of consumption
54:47.560 --> 54:49.560
you think it's about what you like
54:49.560 --> 54:51.560
but it's based on the business model
54:51.560 --> 54:53.560
you paid for this 10 track
54:53.560 --> 54:55.560
service and then you listen to that for a while
54:55.560 --> 54:57.560
and then when everything was flat
54:57.560 --> 54:59.560
priced you tended to listen differently
54:59.560 --> 55:01.560
now so I think
55:01.560 --> 55:03.560
the album is still tremendously important that's why we have it
55:03.560 --> 55:05.560
and you can save albums and so forth
55:05.560 --> 55:07.560
and you have a huge amount of people who really listen
55:07.560 --> 55:09.560
according to albums and I like that because
55:09.560 --> 55:11.560
it is a creator format you can tell a longer
55:11.560 --> 55:13.560
story over several tracks
55:13.560 --> 55:15.560
and so some people listen to just one track
55:15.560 --> 55:17.560
some people actually want to hear that whole
55:17.560 --> 55:19.560
story
55:19.560 --> 55:21.560
now in podcast I think
55:21.560 --> 55:23.560
I think it's different
55:23.560 --> 55:25.560
you can argue that podcasts might be more
55:25.560 --> 55:27.560
like shows on Netflix
55:27.560 --> 55:29.560
you have like a full season of Narcos
55:29.560 --> 55:31.560
and you're probably not going to do like one
55:31.560 --> 55:33.560
episode of Narcos and then one of House of Cards
55:33.560 --> 55:35.560
like you know
55:35.560 --> 55:37.560
there's a narrative there
55:37.560 --> 55:39.560
and you love the cast
55:39.560 --> 55:41.560
and you love these characters
55:41.560 --> 55:43.560
so I think people love shows
55:43.560 --> 55:45.560
and I think they will
55:45.560 --> 55:47.560
listen to those shows
55:47.560 --> 55:49.560
I do think you follow a bunch of shows at the same time
55:49.560 --> 55:51.560
so there's certainly an opportunity to bring you the
55:51.560 --> 55:53.560
latest episode of
55:53.560 --> 55:55.560
whatever the 5, 6, 10 things that you're into
55:55.560 --> 55:57.560
but I think
55:57.560 --> 55:59.560
I think people are going to listen
55:59.560 --> 56:01.560
to specific hosts
56:01.560 --> 56:03.560
and love those hosts
56:03.560 --> 56:05.560
for a long time because I think there's something
56:05.560 --> 56:07.560
different with podcasts
56:07.560 --> 56:09.560
where this format
56:09.560 --> 56:11.560
of the
56:11.560 --> 56:13.560
experience of the audience
56:13.560 --> 56:15.560
is actually standing here right between us
56:15.560 --> 56:17.560
whereas if you look at something on TV
56:17.560 --> 56:19.560
the audio actually would come from
56:19.560 --> 56:21.560
you would sit over there and the audio would come to you
56:21.560 --> 56:23.560
from both of us as if you were watching
56:23.560 --> 56:25.560
not as if you were part of the conversation
56:25.560 --> 56:27.560
so my experience of having to listen to podcasts
56:27.560 --> 56:29.560
like yours and Joe Rogan
56:29.560 --> 56:31.560
I feel like I know all of these people
56:31.560 --> 56:33.560
and I have no idea who I am
56:33.560 --> 56:35.560
but I feel like I've listened to so many hours of them
56:35.560 --> 56:37.560
it's very different from me watching
56:37.560 --> 56:39.560
like a TV show or an interview
56:39.560 --> 56:41.560
so I think you kind of
56:41.560 --> 56:43.560
fall in love with people
56:43.560 --> 56:45.560
and experience in a different way
56:45.560 --> 56:47.560
so I think shows and hosts
56:47.560 --> 56:49.560
are going to be very important
56:49.560 --> 56:51.560
I don't think that's going to go away into some sort of thing
56:51.560 --> 56:53.560
where you don't even know who you're listening to
56:53.560 --> 56:55.560
I don't think that's going to happen
56:55.560 --> 56:57.560
what I do think is, I think there's a tremendous
56:57.560 --> 56:59.560
discovery opportunity
56:59.560 --> 57:01.560
in podcasts because
57:01.560 --> 57:03.560
the catalogue is growing quite quickly
57:03.560 --> 57:05.560
and
57:05.560 --> 57:07.560
I think podcasts is only
57:07.560 --> 57:09.560
a few like five, six hundred thousand
57:09.560 --> 57:11.560
shows right now
57:11.560 --> 57:13.560
if you look back to YouTube as another analogy
57:13.560 --> 57:15.560
for creators, no one really knows
57:15.560 --> 57:17.560
if you would lift the lid on
57:17.560 --> 57:19.560
YouTube but it's probably billions
57:19.560 --> 57:21.560
of episodes
57:21.560 --> 57:23.560
and so I think the podcast catalogue would probably grow
57:23.560 --> 57:25.560
tremendously because the creation
57:25.560 --> 57:27.560
tools are getting easier
57:27.560 --> 57:29.560
and you're going to have this
57:29.560 --> 57:31.560
discovery opportunity that I think is really big
57:31.560 --> 57:33.560
so a lot of people tell me that they love their shows
57:33.560 --> 57:35.560
but discovering
57:35.560 --> 57:37.560
podcasts kind of suck
57:37.560 --> 57:39.560
it's really hard to get into new show
57:39.560 --> 57:41.560
they're usually quite long, it's a big time investment
57:41.560 --> 57:43.560
so I think there's plenty of opportunity
57:43.560 --> 57:45.560
in the discovery part
57:45.560 --> 57:47.560
yeah for sure, a hundred percent
57:47.560 --> 57:49.560
and even the dumbest
57:49.560 --> 57:51.560
there's so many low hanging fruit too
57:51.560 --> 57:53.560
for example
57:53.560 --> 57:55.560
just knowing
57:55.560 --> 57:57.560
what episode to listen to first
57:57.560 --> 57:59.560
to try out a podcast
57:59.560 --> 58:01.560
exactly because most podcasts
58:01.560 --> 58:03.560
don't have an order to them
58:03.560 --> 58:05.560
they can be listened to out of order
58:05.560 --> 58:07.560
and
58:07.560 --> 58:09.560
sorry to say
58:09.560 --> 58:11.560
some are better than others
58:11.560 --> 58:13.560
episodes so some episodes of Joe Rogan
58:13.560 --> 58:15.560
are better than others
58:15.560 --> 58:17.560
and it's nice to know
58:17.560 --> 58:19.560
which you should listen to
58:19.560 --> 58:21.560
to try it out and there's as far
58:21.560 --> 58:23.560
as I know almost no information
58:23.560 --> 58:25.560
in terms of
58:25.560 --> 58:27.560
like upvotes
58:27.560 --> 58:29.560
on how good an episode is
58:29.560 --> 58:31.560
so I think part of the problem is
58:31.560 --> 58:33.560
it's kind of like music
58:33.560 --> 58:35.560
there isn't one answer, people use music for different things
58:35.560 --> 58:37.560
and there's actually many different types of music
58:37.560 --> 58:39.560
there's workout music and there's classical piano music
58:39.560 --> 58:41.560
and focus music and
58:41.560 --> 58:43.560
and so forth
58:43.560 --> 58:45.560
I think the same with podcasts, some podcasts are sequential
58:45.560 --> 58:47.560
they're supposed to be listened to
58:47.560 --> 58:49.560
in order
58:49.560 --> 58:51.560
it's actually telling and narrative
58:51.560 --> 58:53.560
podcasts are one topic
58:53.560 --> 58:55.560
kind of like yours but different guests
58:55.560 --> 58:57.560
so you could jump in anywhere
58:57.560 --> 58:59.560
some podcasts actually have completely different topics
58:59.560 --> 59:01.560
and for those podcasts it might be that
59:01.560 --> 59:03.560
we should recommend
59:03.560 --> 59:05.560
one episode because it's about AI
59:05.560 --> 59:07.560
from someone
59:07.560 --> 59:09.560
but then they talk about something that you're not interested in
59:09.560 --> 59:11.560
the rest of the episode
59:11.560 --> 59:13.560
so I think what we're spending a lot of time on now
59:13.560 --> 59:15.560
is just first understanding the domain
59:15.560 --> 59:17.560
and creating kind of the knowledge graph
59:17.560 --> 59:19.560
of
59:19.560 --> 59:21.560
how do these objects relate
59:21.560 --> 59:23.560
and how do people consume and I think we'll find that it's going to be
59:23.560 --> 59:25.560
it's going to be different
59:25.560 --> 59:27.560
I'm excited
59:27.560 --> 59:29.560
Spotify is the first
59:29.560 --> 59:31.560
people I'm aware of that are
59:31.560 --> 59:33.560
trying to do this
59:33.560 --> 59:35.560
for podcasting
59:35.560 --> 59:37.560
podcasting has been like a wild west
59:37.560 --> 59:39.560
until now
59:39.560 --> 59:41.560
we want to be very careful though
59:41.560 --> 59:43.560
because it's been a very good wild west
59:43.560 --> 59:45.560
I think it's this fragile ecosystem
59:45.560 --> 59:47.560
and
59:47.560 --> 59:49.560
we want to make sure that
59:49.560 --> 59:51.560
you don't barge in and say
59:51.560 --> 59:53.560
we're going to internetize this thing
59:53.560 --> 59:55.560
and you have to think about
59:55.560 --> 59:57.560
the creators, you have to understand
59:57.560 --> 59:59.560
how they get distribution today
59:59.560 --> 1:00:01.560
who listens to how they make money today
1:00:01.560 --> 1:00:03.560
try to
1:00:03.560 --> 1:00:05.560
make sure that their business model works, that they understand
1:00:05.560 --> 1:00:07.560
I think it's back to doing something
1:00:07.560 --> 1:00:09.560
improving their products
1:00:09.560 --> 1:00:11.560
like feedback loops and distribution
1:00:13.560 --> 1:00:15.560
jumping back into terms of this
1:00:15.560 --> 1:00:17.560
fascinating world of
1:00:17.560 --> 1:00:19.560
recommender system and listening to music
1:00:19.560 --> 1:00:21.560
and using machine learning to analyze things
1:00:21.560 --> 1:00:23.560
do you think it's better
1:00:23.560 --> 1:00:25.560
to
1:00:25.560 --> 1:00:27.560
what currently
1:00:27.560 --> 1:00:29.560
correct me if I'm wrong but
1:00:29.560 --> 1:00:31.560
Spotify lets people pick what they listen to
1:00:31.560 --> 1:00:33.560
for the most part
1:00:33.560 --> 1:00:35.560
there's a discovery process but you kind of
1:00:35.560 --> 1:00:37.560
organize playlists
1:00:37.560 --> 1:00:39.560
is it better to let people pick
1:00:39.560 --> 1:00:41.560
what they listen to or recommend
1:00:41.560 --> 1:00:43.560
what they should listen to
1:00:43.560 --> 1:00:45.560
something like stations by Spotify
1:00:45.560 --> 1:00:47.560
that I saw that you're playing around with
1:00:47.560 --> 1:00:49.560
maybe you can tell me
1:00:49.560 --> 1:00:51.560
what's the status of that
1:00:51.560 --> 1:00:53.560
this is a Pandora style app
1:00:53.560 --> 1:00:55.560
that just kind of as opposed to you select
1:00:55.560 --> 1:00:57.560
the music you listen to
1:00:57.560 --> 1:00:59.560
it kind of feeds you
1:00:59.560 --> 1:01:01.560
the music you listen to
1:01:01.560 --> 1:01:03.560
what's the status of stations by Spotify
1:01:03.560 --> 1:01:05.560
what's its future
1:01:05.560 --> 1:01:07.560
the store is Spotify as we have grown
1:01:07.560 --> 1:01:09.560
has been that we made it more accessible
1:01:09.560 --> 1:01:11.560
to different audiences
1:01:11.560 --> 1:01:13.560
and
1:01:13.560 --> 1:01:15.560
stations is another one of those where
1:01:15.560 --> 1:01:17.560
the question is
1:01:17.560 --> 1:01:19.560
some people want to be very specific
1:01:19.560 --> 1:01:21.560
they actually want to start with heaven right now
1:01:21.560 --> 1:01:23.560
that needs to be very easy to do
1:01:23.560 --> 1:01:25.560
and some people or even the same person
1:01:25.560 --> 1:01:27.560
at some point might say
1:01:27.560 --> 1:01:29.560
I want to feel upbeat
1:01:29.560 --> 1:01:31.560
or I want to feel happy
1:01:31.560 --> 1:01:33.560
or I want songs to sing in the car
1:01:33.560 --> 1:01:35.560
so they put in the information
1:01:35.560 --> 1:01:37.560
at a very different level
1:01:37.560 --> 1:01:39.560
and then we need to translate that into
1:01:39.560 --> 1:01:41.560
musically
1:01:41.560 --> 1:01:43.560
so stations is a test to
1:01:43.560 --> 1:01:45.560
create like a consumption input vector
1:01:45.560 --> 1:01:47.560
that is much simpler where you can just tune it a little bit
1:01:47.560 --> 1:01:49.560
and see if that increases the overall reach
1:01:49.560 --> 1:01:51.560
but we're trying to kind of serve
1:01:51.560 --> 1:01:53.560
the entire gamut of super advanced
1:01:53.560 --> 1:01:55.560
so called music aficionados
1:01:55.560 --> 1:01:57.560
all the way to
1:01:57.560 --> 1:01:59.560
to people who
1:01:59.560 --> 1:02:01.560
they love listening to music but it's not
1:02:01.560 --> 1:02:03.560
their number one priority in life
1:02:03.560 --> 1:02:05.560
they're not going to sit and follow every new release
1:02:05.560 --> 1:02:07.560
from every new artist
1:02:07.560 --> 1:02:09.560
to influence music at
1:02:09.560 --> 1:02:11.560
at a different level
1:02:11.560 --> 1:02:13.560
so we're trying, you can think of it as different
1:02:13.560 --> 1:02:15.560
products and I think when
1:02:15.560 --> 1:02:17.560
one of the interesting things
1:02:17.560 --> 1:02:19.560
to answer your question on
1:02:19.560 --> 1:02:21.560
if it's better to lift the user choose
1:02:21.560 --> 1:02:23.560
or to play I think the answer is
1:02:23.560 --> 1:02:25.560
the challenge when you
1:02:25.560 --> 1:02:27.560
when machine learning kind of came along
1:02:27.560 --> 1:02:29.560
there was a lot of thinking about
1:02:29.560 --> 1:02:31.560
what does product development mean
1:02:31.560 --> 1:02:33.560
in a machine learning context
1:02:33.560 --> 1:02:35.560
people like Andrew Eng for example
1:02:35.560 --> 1:02:37.560
when he went to Baidu
1:02:37.560 --> 1:02:39.560
he started doing a lot of practical machine learning
1:02:39.560 --> 1:02:41.560
went from academia and he thought a lot about this
1:02:41.560 --> 1:02:43.560
and he had this notion that
1:02:43.560 --> 1:02:45.560
you know product manager, designer
1:02:45.560 --> 1:02:47.560
and they used to work around this wireframe
1:02:47.560 --> 1:02:49.560
kind of describe what the product should look like
1:02:49.560 --> 1:02:51.560
was something to talk about when you're doing
1:02:51.560 --> 1:02:53.560
like a chat bot or a playlist
1:02:53.560 --> 1:02:55.560
what are you going to say like it should be good
1:02:55.560 --> 1:02:57.560
that's not a good product description
1:02:57.560 --> 1:02:59.560
so how do you do that and he came up with this notion
1:02:59.560 --> 1:03:01.560
that
1:03:01.560 --> 1:03:03.560
the test set is the new wireframe
1:03:03.560 --> 1:03:05.560
and the job of the product manager is to source
1:03:05.560 --> 1:03:07.560
a good test set that is representative of what
1:03:07.560 --> 1:03:09.560
like if you say like I want to play this
1:03:09.560 --> 1:03:11.560
that is songsticing in the car
1:03:11.560 --> 1:03:13.560
job of the product manager to go and source
1:03:13.560 --> 1:03:15.560
like a good test set of what that means
1:03:15.560 --> 1:03:17.560
then you can work with engineering to have algorithms
1:03:17.560 --> 1:03:19.560
to try to produce that right
1:03:19.560 --> 1:03:21.560
so we try to think a lot about
1:03:21.560 --> 1:03:23.560
how to structure product development
1:03:23.560 --> 1:03:25.560
for machine learning
1:03:25.560 --> 1:03:27.560
age and what we discovered
1:03:27.560 --> 1:03:29.560
was that a lot of it is actually in the expectation
1:03:29.560 --> 1:03:31.560
and you can go
1:03:31.560 --> 1:03:33.560
you can go two ways so
1:03:35.560 --> 1:03:37.560
let's say that
1:03:37.560 --> 1:03:39.560
if you set the expectation with the user
1:03:39.560 --> 1:03:41.560
that this is a discovery product like Discover Weekly
1:03:41.560 --> 1:03:43.560
you're actually setting
1:03:43.560 --> 1:03:45.560
the expectation that most of what we show you will not be
1:03:45.560 --> 1:03:47.560
relevant when you're in the discovery
1:03:47.560 --> 1:03:49.560
process you're going to accept that
1:03:49.560 --> 1:03:51.560
actually if you find one gem every Monday
1:03:51.560 --> 1:03:53.560
that you totally love
1:03:53.560 --> 1:03:55.560
you're probably going to be happy
1:03:55.560 --> 1:03:57.560
even though the statistical meaning
1:03:57.560 --> 1:03:59.560
1 out of 10 is terrible or 1 out of 20
1:03:59.560 --> 1:04:01.560
is terrible from a user point of view
1:04:01.560 --> 1:04:03.560
because the setting was discovered it's fine
1:04:03.560 --> 1:04:05.560
can I start to interrupt real quick
1:04:05.560 --> 1:04:07.560
I just actually learned about Discover Weekly
1:04:07.560 --> 1:04:09.560
which is a Spotify
1:04:09.560 --> 1:04:11.560
I don't know
1:04:11.560 --> 1:04:13.560
it's a feature of Spotify that shows you
1:04:13.560 --> 1:04:15.560
cool songs to listen
1:04:15.560 --> 1:04:17.560
maybe I can do
1:04:17.560 --> 1:04:19.560
issue tracking I couldn't find it on my Spotify app
1:04:19.560 --> 1:04:21.560
it's in your library
1:04:21.560 --> 1:04:23.560
it's in the library it's in the list of live
1:04:23.560 --> 1:04:25.560
because I was like whoa this is cool I didn't know this existed
1:04:25.560 --> 1:04:27.560
and I tried to find it
1:04:27.560 --> 1:04:29.560
but I would show it to you
1:04:29.560 --> 1:04:31.560
and feed it back to our product teams
1:04:31.560 --> 1:04:33.560
there you go
1:04:33.560 --> 1:04:35.560
so yeah sorry
1:04:35.560 --> 1:04:37.560
just to mention
1:04:37.560 --> 1:04:39.560
the expectation there is
1:04:39.560 --> 1:04:41.560
basically you're going to
1:04:41.560 --> 1:04:43.560
discover new songs
1:04:43.560 --> 1:04:45.560
so then you can be quite adventurous
1:04:45.560 --> 1:04:47.560
in the recommendations you do
1:04:47.560 --> 1:04:49.560
but we have
1:04:49.560 --> 1:04:51.560
another product called Daily Mix
1:04:51.560 --> 1:04:53.560
which kind of implies that these are only going to be your favorites
1:04:53.560 --> 1:04:55.560
so if you have
1:04:55.560 --> 1:04:57.560
9 out of 10 that is good
1:04:57.560 --> 1:04:59.560
and 9 out of 10 that doesn't work for you
1:04:59.560 --> 1:05:01.560
you're going to think it's a horrible product
1:05:01.560 --> 1:05:03.560
so actually a lot of the product development
1:05:03.560 --> 1:05:05.560
we learned over the years is about setting the right expectations
1:05:05.560 --> 1:05:07.560
so for Daily Mix
1:05:07.560 --> 1:05:09.560
you know algorithmically
1:05:09.560 --> 1:05:11.560
we would pick among things that feel very safe
1:05:11.560 --> 1:05:13.560
in your taste space
1:05:13.560 --> 1:05:15.560
or discover weekly we go kind of wild
1:05:15.560 --> 1:05:17.560
because the expectation is
1:05:17.560 --> 1:05:19.560
most of this is not going to
1:05:19.560 --> 1:05:21.560
so a lot of that a lot of to answer your question there
1:05:21.560 --> 1:05:23.560
a lot of
1:05:23.560 --> 1:05:25.560
we have some products where the whole point is
1:05:25.560 --> 1:05:27.560
that the user can click play put the phone in the pocket
1:05:27.560 --> 1:05:29.560
and it should be really good music for like an hour
1:05:29.560 --> 1:05:31.560
we have other products where
1:05:31.560 --> 1:05:33.560
you probably need to say like no
1:05:33.560 --> 1:05:35.560
save, no, no
1:05:35.560 --> 1:05:37.560
and it's very interactive
1:05:37.560 --> 1:05:39.560
that makes sense and then the radio product
1:05:39.560 --> 1:05:41.560
the stations product is one of these like click play
1:05:41.560 --> 1:05:43.560
put in your pocket for hours
1:05:43.560 --> 1:05:45.560
that's really interesting so you're thinking of
1:05:45.560 --> 1:05:47.560
different test sets
1:05:47.560 --> 1:05:49.560
for different users
1:05:49.560 --> 1:05:51.560
and trying to create products that sort of
1:05:51.560 --> 1:05:53.560
optimize
1:05:53.560 --> 1:05:55.560
optimize for those test sets
1:05:55.560 --> 1:05:57.560
that represents a specific set of
1:05:57.560 --> 1:05:59.560
users yes I think
1:05:59.560 --> 1:06:01.560
one thing that I think is interesting
1:06:01.560 --> 1:06:03.560
is
1:06:03.560 --> 1:06:05.560
we invested quite heavily in editorial
1:06:05.560 --> 1:06:07.560
in people creating playlists
1:06:07.560 --> 1:06:09.560
using statistical data
1:06:09.560 --> 1:06:11.560
and that was successful for us and then we also
1:06:11.560 --> 1:06:13.560
invested in machine learning
1:06:13.560 --> 1:06:15.560
and for the longest time
1:06:15.560 --> 1:06:17.560
within Spotify and within the rest of the
1:06:17.560 --> 1:06:19.560
industry there was always this narrative of
1:06:19.560 --> 1:06:21.560
humans versus the machine
1:06:21.560 --> 1:06:23.560
algo versus editorial
1:06:23.560 --> 1:06:25.560
and editors would say like well
1:06:25.560 --> 1:06:27.560
if I had that data if I could see your
1:06:27.560 --> 1:06:29.560
playlisting history and I made a choice
1:06:29.560 --> 1:06:31.560
for you I would have made a better choice
1:06:31.560 --> 1:06:33.560
and they would have because they're
1:06:33.560 --> 1:06:35.560
much smarter than these algorithms
1:06:35.560 --> 1:06:37.560
human is incredibly smart compared to our
1:06:37.560 --> 1:06:39.560
algorithms they can take
1:06:39.560 --> 1:06:41.560
culture into account and so forth
1:06:41.560 --> 1:06:43.560
the problem is that they can't make 200 million
1:06:43.560 --> 1:06:45.560
decisions
1:06:45.560 --> 1:06:47.560
per hour for every user that logs
1:06:47.560 --> 1:06:49.560
in so the algo may be
1:06:49.560 --> 1:06:51.560
not as sophisticated but much more efficient
1:06:51.560 --> 1:06:53.560
so there was this contradiction
1:06:53.560 --> 1:06:55.560
but then a few years ago
1:06:55.560 --> 1:06:57.560
we started
1:06:57.560 --> 1:06:59.560
focusing on this kind of human in the loop
1:06:59.560 --> 1:07:01.560
thinking around machine learning
1:07:01.560 --> 1:07:03.560
and we actually coined an internal
1:07:03.560 --> 1:07:05.560
term for it called algotorial
1:07:05.560 --> 1:07:07.560
the combination of algorithms and editors
1:07:07.560 --> 1:07:09.560
where if we take a concrete
1:07:09.560 --> 1:07:11.560
example you think
1:07:11.560 --> 1:07:13.560
of the editor this
1:07:13.560 --> 1:07:15.560
paid expert that we have
1:07:15.560 --> 1:07:17.560
there's really good at something like
1:07:17.560 --> 1:07:19.560
soul, hip hop
1:07:19.560 --> 1:07:21.560
EDM something right there are two experts
1:07:21.560 --> 1:07:23.560
no one in the industry
1:07:23.560 --> 1:07:25.560
so they have all the cultural knowledge
1:07:25.560 --> 1:07:27.560
you think of them as the product manager
1:07:27.560 --> 1:07:29.560
and you say that
1:07:29.560 --> 1:07:31.560
let's say that you want to create
1:07:31.560 --> 1:07:33.560
you think that there's a product
1:07:33.560 --> 1:07:35.560
need in the world for something like songs to sing
1:07:35.560 --> 1:07:37.560
in the car or songs to sing in the shower
1:07:37.560 --> 1:07:39.560
I'm taking that example because it exists
1:07:39.560 --> 1:07:41.560
people love to scream songs in the car
1:07:41.560 --> 1:07:43.560
when they drive right
1:07:43.560 --> 1:07:45.560
so you want to create that product and you have this product manager
1:07:45.560 --> 1:07:47.560
who's a musical expert
1:07:47.560 --> 1:07:49.560
they create, they come up with a concept
1:07:49.560 --> 1:07:51.560
like I think this is a missing thing in humanity
1:07:51.560 --> 1:07:53.560
like a playlist called songs to sing in the car
1:07:53.560 --> 1:07:55.560
they create
1:07:55.560 --> 1:07:57.560
the framing, the image
1:07:57.560 --> 1:07:59.560
the title and they create a test set
1:07:59.560 --> 1:08:01.560
they create a group of songs
1:08:01.560 --> 1:08:03.560
like a few thousand songs out of the catalog
1:08:03.560 --> 1:08:05.560
that they manually curate
1:08:05.560 --> 1:08:07.560
that are known songs that are great to sing in the car
1:08:07.560 --> 1:08:09.560
and they can take like
1:08:09.560 --> 1:08:11.560
through romance into account they understand things
1:08:11.560 --> 1:08:13.560
that algorithms do not at all
1:08:13.560 --> 1:08:15.560
so they have this huge set of tracks
1:08:15.560 --> 1:08:17.560
then when we deliver that to you
1:08:17.560 --> 1:08:19.560
we look at your taste vectors
1:08:19.560 --> 1:08:21.560
and you get the 20 tracks that are songs to sing in the car
1:08:21.560 --> 1:08:23.560
in your taste
1:08:23.560 --> 1:08:25.560
so you have personalization
1:08:25.560 --> 1:08:27.560
and editorial input
1:08:27.560 --> 1:08:29.560
in the same process
1:08:29.560 --> 1:08:31.560
if that makes sense
1:08:31.560 --> 1:08:33.560
it makes total sense and I have several questions around that
1:08:33.560 --> 1:08:35.560
this is like
1:08:35.560 --> 1:08:37.560
fascinating
1:08:37.560 --> 1:08:39.560
so first it is a little bit surprising
1:08:39.560 --> 1:08:41.560
to me
1:08:41.560 --> 1:08:43.560
that the world expert
1:08:43.560 --> 1:08:45.560
humans are outperforming
1:08:45.560 --> 1:08:47.560
machines
1:08:47.560 --> 1:08:49.560
at specifying
1:08:49.560 --> 1:08:51.560
songs to sing in the car
1:08:51.560 --> 1:08:53.560
so
1:08:53.560 --> 1:08:55.560
maybe you could talk to that a little bit
1:08:55.560 --> 1:08:57.560
I don't know if you can put it into words but
1:08:57.560 --> 1:08:59.560
what is it
1:08:59.560 --> 1:09:01.560
how difficult is this problem
1:09:01.560 --> 1:09:03.560
of
1:09:03.560 --> 1:09:05.560
I guess what I'm trying to ask
1:09:05.560 --> 1:09:07.560
is there how difficult is it to encode
1:09:07.560 --> 1:09:09.560
the cultural references
1:09:09.560 --> 1:09:11.560
the context
1:09:11.560 --> 1:09:13.560
of the song, the artists
1:09:13.560 --> 1:09:15.560
all those things together
1:09:15.560 --> 1:09:17.560
can machine learning really not do that
1:09:17.560 --> 1:09:19.560
I mean I think machine learning is great
1:09:19.560 --> 1:09:21.560
at replicating patterns
1:09:21.560 --> 1:09:23.560
if you have the patterns
1:09:23.560 --> 1:09:25.560
but if you try to write
1:09:25.560 --> 1:09:27.560
a spec of what song is great
1:09:27.560 --> 1:09:29.560
to sing in the car definition is
1:09:29.560 --> 1:09:31.560
is it loud
1:09:31.560 --> 1:09:33.560
does it have many choruses to have been in movies
1:09:33.560 --> 1:09:35.560
it quickly gets incredibly complicated
1:09:35.560 --> 1:09:37.560
right
1:09:37.560 --> 1:09:39.560
and a lot of it may not be
1:09:39.560 --> 1:09:41.560
in the structure of the song or the title
1:09:41.560 --> 1:09:43.560
it could be cultural references because
1:09:43.560 --> 1:09:45.560
it was a hasty one
1:09:45.560 --> 1:09:47.560
so the definition problems
1:09:47.560 --> 1:09:49.560
quickly get
1:09:49.560 --> 1:09:51.560
and I think that was the insight of Andrew Eng
1:09:51.560 --> 1:09:53.560
when he said that job of the product manager
1:09:53.560 --> 1:09:55.560
is to understand these things that
1:09:55.560 --> 1:09:57.560
algorithms don't and then
1:09:57.560 --> 1:09:59.560
define what that looks like
1:09:59.560 --> 1:10:01.560
and then you have something to train towards
1:10:01.560 --> 1:10:03.560
then you have kind of the test set
1:10:03.560 --> 1:10:05.560
but today the editors create this
1:10:05.560 --> 1:10:07.560
pool of tracks and then we personalize
1:10:07.560 --> 1:10:09.560
you could easily imagine that once you have this set
1:10:09.560 --> 1:10:11.560
you could have some automatic exploration
1:10:11.560 --> 1:10:13.560
of the rest of the catalog because then you understand
1:10:13.560 --> 1:10:15.560
what it is
1:10:15.560 --> 1:10:17.560
and then the other side of it when machine learning
1:10:17.560 --> 1:10:19.560
does help is this taste
1:10:19.560 --> 1:10:21.560
vector
1:10:21.560 --> 1:10:23.560
how hard is it to construct
1:10:23.560 --> 1:10:25.560
a vector that represents the things
1:10:25.560 --> 1:10:27.560
an individual human likes
1:10:27.560 --> 1:10:29.560
this human preference
1:10:29.560 --> 1:10:31.560
so you can
1:10:31.560 --> 1:10:33.560
you know music isn't like
1:10:33.560 --> 1:10:35.560
it's not like Amazon
1:10:35.560 --> 1:10:37.560
like things you usually buy
1:10:37.560 --> 1:10:39.560
music seems more amorphous
1:10:39.560 --> 1:10:41.560
like it's this thing
1:10:41.560 --> 1:10:43.560
that's hard to specify like
1:10:43.560 --> 1:10:45.560
what is
1:10:45.560 --> 1:10:47.560
if you look at my playlist what is the music
1:10:47.560 --> 1:10:49.560
that I love it's harder
1:10:49.560 --> 1:10:51.560
it seems to be
1:10:51.560 --> 1:10:53.560
much more difficult to specify concretely
1:10:53.560 --> 1:10:55.560
so how hard is it
1:10:55.560 --> 1:10:57.560
to build a taste vector
1:10:57.560 --> 1:10:59.560
it is very hard in the sense that you need a lot of
1:10:59.560 --> 1:11:01.560
data
1:11:01.560 --> 1:11:03.560
and I think what we found was that
1:11:03.560 --> 1:11:05.560
so it's not a stationary problem
1:11:05.560 --> 1:11:07.560
it changes over time
1:11:07.560 --> 1:11:09.560
and so
1:11:09.560 --> 1:11:11.560
we've gone
1:11:11.560 --> 1:11:13.560
through the journey of if
1:11:13.560 --> 1:11:15.560
you've done a lot of computer vision
1:11:15.560 --> 1:11:17.560
obviously I've done a bunch of computer vision
1:11:17.560 --> 1:11:19.560
in my past and we started
1:11:19.560 --> 1:11:21.560
kind of with the handcrafted heuristics
1:11:21.560 --> 1:11:23.560
for you know
1:11:23.560 --> 1:11:25.560
this is kind of in the music this is this
1:11:25.560 --> 1:11:27.560
and if you consume this you probably like this
1:11:27.560 --> 1:11:29.560
so we have
1:11:29.560 --> 1:11:31.560
we started there and we have some of that still
1:11:31.560 --> 1:11:33.560
then what was interesting about the playlist data
1:11:33.560 --> 1:11:35.560
was that you could find these latent things that
1:11:35.560 --> 1:11:37.560
wouldn't necessarily even make sense to you
1:11:37.560 --> 1:11:39.560
that could
1:11:39.560 --> 1:11:41.560
could even capture maybe cultural references
1:11:41.560 --> 1:11:43.560
because they co occurred things that
1:11:43.560 --> 1:11:45.560
that wouldn't have appeared
1:11:45.560 --> 1:11:47.560
kind of mechanistically either in the content
1:11:47.560 --> 1:11:49.560
or so forth so
1:11:49.560 --> 1:11:51.560
um
1:11:51.560 --> 1:11:53.560
I think that
1:11:53.560 --> 1:11:55.560
um
1:11:55.560 --> 1:11:57.560
I think the core assumption
1:11:57.560 --> 1:11:59.560
is that
1:11:59.560 --> 1:12:01.560
there are patterns
1:12:01.560 --> 1:12:03.560
in almost everything
1:12:03.560 --> 1:12:05.560
and if there are patterns
1:12:05.560 --> 1:12:07.560
these embedding techniques are getting better and better
1:12:07.560 --> 1:12:09.560
now as everyone else
1:12:09.560 --> 1:12:11.560
we're also using
1:12:11.560 --> 1:12:13.560
kind of deep embeddings where you can encode binary
1:12:13.560 --> 1:12:15.560
values and so forth
1:12:15.560 --> 1:12:17.560
and what I think
1:12:17.560 --> 1:12:19.560
is interesting is this process
1:12:19.560 --> 1:12:21.560
to try to find things that
1:12:21.560 --> 1:12:23.560
um
1:12:23.560 --> 1:12:25.560
necessarily you wouldn't actually have
1:12:25.560 --> 1:12:27.560
guest so it is very
1:12:27.560 --> 1:12:29.560
hard in an engineering
1:12:29.560 --> 1:12:31.560
sense to find the right dimensions
1:12:31.560 --> 1:12:33.560
it's an incredible scalability
1:12:33.560 --> 1:12:35.560
problem to do for hundreds of millions
1:12:35.560 --> 1:12:37.560
of users and to update it every day
1:12:37.560 --> 1:12:39.560
but in
1:12:39.560 --> 1:12:41.560
theory
1:12:41.560 --> 1:12:43.560
in theory embeddings isn't that
1:12:43.560 --> 1:12:45.560
complicated the fact
1:12:45.560 --> 1:12:47.560
that you try to find some principle components
1:12:47.560 --> 1:12:49.560
or something like that dimensionality reduction
1:12:49.560 --> 1:12:51.560
and so forth so the theory I guess is easy
1:12:51.560 --> 1:12:53.560
because it's very very hard
1:12:53.560 --> 1:12:55.560
and it's a huge
1:12:55.560 --> 1:12:57.560
engineering challenge but fortunately we have
1:12:57.560 --> 1:12:59.560
some amazing both research and
1:12:59.560 --> 1:13:01.560
engineering teams in this space
1:13:01.560 --> 1:13:03.560
yeah I guess the
1:13:03.560 --> 1:13:05.560
question is all
1:13:05.560 --> 1:13:07.560
I mean it's similar I deal with the autonomous
1:13:07.560 --> 1:13:09.560
vehicle space is the question is
1:13:09.560 --> 1:13:11.560
how hard is driving
1:13:11.560 --> 1:13:13.560
and here is
1:13:13.560 --> 1:13:15.560
basically the question is of
1:13:15.560 --> 1:13:17.560
edge cases
1:13:17.560 --> 1:13:19.560
so embedding
1:13:19.560 --> 1:13:21.560
probably works
1:13:21.560 --> 1:13:23.560
not probably but
1:13:23.560 --> 1:13:25.560
I would imagine works well
1:13:25.560 --> 1:13:27.560
in a lot of cases
1:13:27.560 --> 1:13:29.560
so there's a bunch of questions that arise then
1:13:29.560 --> 1:13:31.560
so do song
1:13:31.560 --> 1:13:33.560
preferences does your taste vector
1:13:33.560 --> 1:13:35.560
depend on context
1:13:35.560 --> 1:13:37.560
like mood
1:13:37.560 --> 1:13:39.560
right so there's
1:13:39.560 --> 1:13:41.560
different moods and
1:13:41.560 --> 1:13:43.560
absolutely so how does that
1:13:43.560 --> 1:13:45.560
take in
1:13:45.560 --> 1:13:47.560
is it is it possible to take that
1:13:47.560 --> 1:13:49.560
consideration or do you just leave
1:13:49.560 --> 1:13:51.560
that as a interface
1:13:51.560 --> 1:13:53.560
problem that allows the user to just control
1:13:53.560 --> 1:13:55.560
it so when I'm looking for a work
1:13:55.560 --> 1:13:57.560
out music I kind of specify it
1:13:57.560 --> 1:13:59.560
by choosing certain playlists
1:13:59.560 --> 1:14:01.560
doing certain search yeah
1:14:01.560 --> 1:14:03.560
so that's a great point and back to the product
1:14:03.560 --> 1:14:05.560
development you could try
1:14:05.560 --> 1:14:07.560
to spend a few years trying to predict
1:14:07.560 --> 1:14:09.560
which mood you're in automatically when you open
1:14:09.560 --> 1:14:11.560
Spotify or you create a tab
1:14:11.560 --> 1:14:13.560
which is happy and sad right and you're going to be
1:14:13.560 --> 1:14:15.560
right 100% of the time with one click
1:14:15.560 --> 1:14:17.560
now probably much better to let
1:14:17.560 --> 1:14:19.560
the user tell you if they're happy or sad
1:14:19.560 --> 1:14:21.560
or if they want to work out on the other hand
1:14:21.560 --> 1:14:23.560
if your user interface become 2000
1:14:23.560 --> 1:14:25.560
tabs you're introducing so much friction
1:14:25.560 --> 1:14:27.560
so no one will use the product so then you have to
1:14:27.560 --> 1:14:29.560
get better so it's this
1:14:29.560 --> 1:14:31.560
thing where I think it maybe was
1:14:31.560 --> 1:14:33.560
I remember who coined it but it's
1:14:33.560 --> 1:14:35.560
called full tolerant UIs right to build a UI
1:14:35.560 --> 1:14:37.560
that is tolerant to being wrong
1:14:37.560 --> 1:14:39.560
and then you can be much
1:14:39.560 --> 1:14:41.560
less right in your
1:14:41.560 --> 1:14:43.560
in your algorithms so
1:14:43.560 --> 1:14:45.560
we had to learn a lot of that
1:14:45.560 --> 1:14:47.560
building the right UI that fits
1:14:47.560 --> 1:14:49.560
where the machine learning is
1:14:49.560 --> 1:14:51.560
and a great
1:14:51.560 --> 1:14:53.560
discovery there which was
1:14:53.560 --> 1:14:55.560
by the teams during
1:14:55.560 --> 1:14:57.560
one of our hack days was this
1:14:57.560 --> 1:14:59.560
thing of taking discovery packaging
1:14:59.560 --> 1:15:01.560
into a playlist and saying that
1:15:01.560 --> 1:15:03.560
these are new tracks
1:15:03.560 --> 1:15:05.560
that we think you might like
1:15:05.560 --> 1:15:07.560
based on this and setting the right expectation
1:15:07.560 --> 1:15:09.560
made it a great product
1:15:09.560 --> 1:15:11.560
so I think we have this benefit that for example
1:15:11.560 --> 1:15:13.560
Tesla doesn't have
1:15:13.560 --> 1:15:15.560
that we can
1:15:15.560 --> 1:15:17.560
we can change the expectation we can build
1:15:17.560 --> 1:15:19.560
a full tolerant setting it's very hard to be
1:15:19.560 --> 1:15:21.560
full tolerant when you're driving at
1:15:21.560 --> 1:15:23.560
100 miles per hour or something
1:15:23.560 --> 1:15:25.560
and we have the luxury of
1:15:25.560 --> 1:15:27.560
being able to say that
1:15:27.560 --> 1:15:29.560
of being wrong if we have the right
1:15:29.560 --> 1:15:31.560
UI which gives us
1:15:31.560 --> 1:15:33.560
different abilities to take more risk
1:15:33.560 --> 1:15:35.560
so I actually think the self driving
1:15:35.560 --> 1:15:37.560
problem is much harder
1:15:37.560 --> 1:15:39.560
oh yeah for sure
1:15:39.560 --> 1:15:41.560
it's much less fun
1:15:41.560 --> 1:15:43.560
because
1:15:43.560 --> 1:15:45.560
people die exactly
1:15:45.560 --> 1:15:47.560
and in Spotify
1:15:47.560 --> 1:15:49.560
it's
1:15:49.560 --> 1:15:51.560
such a more fun problem because
1:15:51.560 --> 1:15:53.560
failure will
1:15:53.560 --> 1:15:55.560
I mean failure is beautiful in a way
1:15:55.560 --> 1:15:57.560
at least exploration so it's a really fun
1:15:57.560 --> 1:15:59.560
reinforcement learning problem and the worst
1:15:59.560 --> 1:16:01.560
case scenario is you get these WTF tweets
1:16:01.560 --> 1:16:03.560
like how did I get this
1:16:03.560 --> 1:16:05.560
which is a lot better than the self
1:16:05.560 --> 1:16:07.560
driving failure
1:16:07.560 --> 1:16:09.560
so
1:16:09.560 --> 1:16:11.560
what's the feedback that a user
1:16:11.560 --> 1:16:13.560
what's the signal
1:16:13.560 --> 1:16:15.560
that a user provides
1:16:15.560 --> 1:16:17.560
into the system so
1:16:17.560 --> 1:16:19.560
you mentioned skipping
1:16:19.560 --> 1:16:21.560
what is like the strongest signal
1:16:21.560 --> 1:16:23.560
you didn't mention clicking
1:16:23.560 --> 1:16:25.560
like
1:16:25.560 --> 1:16:27.560
so we have a few signals that are important
1:16:27.560 --> 1:16:29.560
obviously playing
1:16:29.560 --> 1:16:31.560
playing through
1:16:31.560 --> 1:16:33.560
so one of the benefits of music actually
1:16:33.560 --> 1:16:35.560
even compared to podcasts or
1:16:35.560 --> 1:16:37.560
movies is the object itself
1:16:37.560 --> 1:16:39.560
is really only about three minutes
1:16:39.560 --> 1:16:41.560
so you get a lot of chances to recommend
1:16:41.560 --> 1:16:43.560
and the feedback loop is
1:16:43.560 --> 1:16:45.560
every three minutes instead of every two hours
1:16:45.560 --> 1:16:47.560
or something so you actually get
1:16:47.560 --> 1:16:49.560
kind of noisy but
1:16:49.560 --> 1:16:51.560
quite fast feedback and so you can see
1:16:51.560 --> 1:16:53.560
if people played through or if the
1:16:53.560 --> 1:16:55.560
which is the inverse of skip really
1:16:55.560 --> 1:16:57.560
that's an important signal on the other hand
1:16:57.560 --> 1:16:59.560
much of the consumption happens
1:16:59.560 --> 1:17:01.560
when your phone is in your pocket maybe you're running
1:17:01.560 --> 1:17:03.560
or driving or you're playing on a speaker
1:17:03.560 --> 1:17:05.560
and you're not skipping doesn't mean that you love that song
1:17:05.560 --> 1:17:07.560
it might be that it wasn't bad enough
1:17:07.560 --> 1:17:09.560
that you would walk up and skip
1:17:09.560 --> 1:17:11.560
so it's a noisy signal
1:17:11.560 --> 1:17:13.560
then we have the equivalent of the like
1:17:13.560 --> 1:17:15.560
which is you save it to your library
1:17:15.560 --> 1:17:17.560
that's a pretty strong signal of affection
1:17:17.560 --> 1:17:19.560
and then
1:17:19.560 --> 1:17:21.560
we have the more explicit signal
1:17:21.560 --> 1:17:23.560
of play listing like you took the time
1:17:23.560 --> 1:17:25.560
to create a playlist you put it in there
1:17:25.560 --> 1:17:27.560
there's a very little small chance that
1:17:27.560 --> 1:17:29.560
if you took all that trouble this is not
1:17:29.560 --> 1:17:31.560
a really important track to you
1:17:31.560 --> 1:17:33.560
but also
1:17:33.560 --> 1:17:35.560
what are the tracks it relates to so we have
1:17:35.560 --> 1:17:37.560
we have the play listing we have the like and then we have
1:17:37.560 --> 1:17:39.560
the listening or skip
1:17:39.560 --> 1:17:41.560
and you have to
1:17:41.560 --> 1:17:43.560
have very different approaches to all of them because
1:17:43.560 --> 1:17:45.560
at different levels of noise
1:17:45.560 --> 1:17:47.560
one is very voluminous but noisy
1:17:47.560 --> 1:17:49.560
and the other is rare but
1:17:49.560 --> 1:17:51.560
you can probably trust it
1:17:51.560 --> 1:17:53.560
yeah it's interesting because
1:17:53.560 --> 1:17:55.560
I think between those signals captures
1:17:55.560 --> 1:17:57.560
all the information you'd want to capture
1:17:57.560 --> 1:17:59.560
I mean there's a feeling
1:17:59.560 --> 1:18:01.560
for me that there's sometimes that I'll
1:18:01.560 --> 1:18:03.560
hear a song that's like yes this is
1:18:03.560 --> 1:18:05.560
you know this was the right song for the moment
1:18:05.560 --> 1:18:07.560
but there's really no way to express
1:18:07.560 --> 1:18:09.560
that fact except by
1:18:09.560 --> 1:18:11.560
listening through it all the way
1:18:11.560 --> 1:18:13.560
and maybe playing it again at that time
1:18:13.560 --> 1:18:15.560
or something but there's
1:18:15.560 --> 1:18:17.560
no need for a button that says
1:18:17.560 --> 1:18:19.560
this was the best song could have
1:18:19.560 --> 1:18:21.560
heard at this moment well we're playing around
1:18:21.560 --> 1:18:23.560
with that with kind of the thumbs up
1:18:23.560 --> 1:18:25.560
concept saying like I really like this
1:18:25.560 --> 1:18:27.560
just kind of talking to the algorithm
1:18:27.560 --> 1:18:29.560
it's unclear if that's the best way
1:18:29.560 --> 1:18:31.560
for humans to interact maybe it is
1:18:31.560 --> 1:18:33.560
maybe they should think of Spotify
1:18:33.560 --> 1:18:35.560
as a person an agent sitting there
1:18:35.560 --> 1:18:37.560
trying to serve you and you can say like
1:18:37.560 --> 1:18:39.560
that's Spotify, good Spotify
1:18:39.560 --> 1:18:41.560
right now the analogy we've had is more
1:18:41.560 --> 1:18:43.560
you shouldn't think of us
1:18:43.560 --> 1:18:45.560
we should be investable and the feedback
1:18:45.560 --> 1:18:47.560
is if you save it
1:18:47.560 --> 1:18:49.560
you work for yourself you do a playlist
1:18:49.560 --> 1:18:51.560
because you think is great and we can learn from that
1:18:51.560 --> 1:18:53.560
it's kind of back to Tesla
1:18:53.560 --> 1:18:55.560
how they kind of have this shadow mode
1:18:55.560 --> 1:18:57.560
we sit in what you drive
1:18:57.560 --> 1:18:59.560
we kind of took the same analogy
1:18:59.560 --> 1:19:01.560
we sit in what you playlist
1:19:01.560 --> 1:19:03.560
and then maybe we can offer you an autopilot
1:19:03.560 --> 1:19:05.560
we can take over for a while or something like that
1:19:05.560 --> 1:19:07.560
and then back off if you say like
1:19:07.560 --> 1:19:09.560
that's not good enough
1:19:09.560 --> 1:19:11.560
but I think it's interesting to figure out
1:19:11.560 --> 1:19:13.560
what your mental model is
1:19:13.560 --> 1:19:15.560
if Spotify is an AI that you talk to
1:19:15.560 --> 1:19:17.560
which I think might be a bit too abstract
1:19:17.560 --> 1:19:19.560
for many consumers
1:19:19.560 --> 1:19:21.560
or if you still think of it as
1:19:21.560 --> 1:19:23.560
it's my music app
1:19:23.560 --> 1:19:25.560
it's more helpful
1:19:25.560 --> 1:19:27.560
and depends on the device it's running on
1:19:27.560 --> 1:19:29.560
which brings us to
1:19:29.560 --> 1:19:31.560
smart speakers
1:19:31.560 --> 1:19:33.560
so I have a lot of the Spotify listening I do
1:19:33.560 --> 1:19:35.560
is on
1:19:35.560 --> 1:19:37.560
things on devices I can talk to
1:19:37.560 --> 1:19:39.560
whether it's from Amazon, Google
1:19:39.560 --> 1:19:41.560
or Apple
1:19:41.560 --> 1:19:43.560
what's the role of Spotify in those devices
1:19:43.560 --> 1:19:45.560
how do you think of it differently than
1:19:45.560 --> 1:19:47.560
on the phone or on the desktop
1:19:47.560 --> 1:19:49.560
there are a few things
1:19:49.560 --> 1:19:51.560
to say about the first of all
1:19:51.560 --> 1:19:53.560
it's incredibly exciting they're growing like crazy
1:19:53.560 --> 1:19:55.560
especially here in the US
1:19:59.560 --> 1:20:01.560
and it's solving
1:20:01.560 --> 1:20:03.560
a consumer need that I think is
1:20:05.560 --> 1:20:07.560
you can think of it as
1:20:07.560 --> 1:20:09.560
just remote interactivity
1:20:09.560 --> 1:20:11.560
you can control this thing from
1:20:11.560 --> 1:20:13.560
across the room and it may
1:20:13.560 --> 1:20:15.560
feel like a small thing but it turns out
1:20:15.560 --> 1:20:17.560
that friction matters to consumers
1:20:17.560 --> 1:20:19.560
being able to say play, pause
1:20:19.560 --> 1:20:21.560
and so forth from across the room
1:20:21.560 --> 1:20:23.560
is very powerful so basically
1:20:23.560 --> 1:20:25.560
you made the living room interactive
1:20:25.560 --> 1:20:27.560
now
1:20:27.560 --> 1:20:29.560
and
1:20:29.560 --> 1:20:31.560
what we see in our data is that
1:20:31.560 --> 1:20:33.560
the number one use case for these speakers
1:20:33.560 --> 1:20:35.560
is music, music and podcast
1:20:35.560 --> 1:20:37.560
so
1:20:37.560 --> 1:20:39.560
fortunately for us it's been important
1:20:39.560 --> 1:20:41.560
to these companies to have those use case
1:20:41.560 --> 1:20:43.560
covered so they want to Spotify on this
1:20:43.560 --> 1:20:45.560
we have very good relationships with
1:20:45.560 --> 1:20:47.560
them
1:20:47.560 --> 1:20:49.560
and we're seeing tremendous
1:20:49.560 --> 1:20:51.560
success with them
1:20:51.560 --> 1:20:53.560
what I think is interesting
1:20:53.560 --> 1:20:55.560
about them is
1:20:55.560 --> 1:20:57.560
it's already working
1:20:57.560 --> 1:20:59.560
we kind of had this
1:20:59.560 --> 1:21:01.560
epiphany
1:21:01.560 --> 1:21:03.560
many years ago back when we started
1:21:03.560 --> 1:21:05.560
using Sonos if you went through all the
1:21:05.560 --> 1:21:07.560
trouble of setting up your Sonos system
1:21:07.560 --> 1:21:09.560
you had this magical experience where you had
1:21:09.560 --> 1:21:11.560
all the music ever made in your living room
1:21:11.560 --> 1:21:13.560
and we
1:21:13.560 --> 1:21:15.560
made this assumption that
1:21:15.560 --> 1:21:17.560
at home everyone used to have a CD player at home
1:21:17.560 --> 1:21:19.560
but they never managed to get their files
1:21:19.560 --> 1:21:21.560
working in the home having this network attached
1:21:21.560 --> 1:21:23.560
storage was too cumbersome for most consumers
1:21:23.560 --> 1:21:25.560
so we made the assumption that
1:21:25.560 --> 1:21:27.560
the home would skip from the CD all the way to
1:21:27.560 --> 1:21:29.560
streaming box
1:21:29.560 --> 1:21:31.560
where you would buy the steering wheel without
1:21:31.560 --> 1:21:33.560
all the music built in that took longer than we
1:21:33.560 --> 1:21:35.560
thought but with the voice speakers that was the
1:21:35.560 --> 1:21:37.560
unlocking that made kind of the connected speaker
1:21:37.560 --> 1:21:39.560
happen in the home
1:21:39.560 --> 1:21:41.560
so it really
1:21:41.560 --> 1:21:43.560
it really exploded and
1:21:43.560 --> 1:21:45.560
we saw this engagement that we
1:21:45.560 --> 1:21:47.560
predicted would happen
1:21:47.560 --> 1:21:49.560
what I think is interesting though is where it's going
1:21:49.560 --> 1:21:51.560
from now
1:21:51.560 --> 1:21:53.560
right now you think of them as voice speakers
1:21:53.560 --> 1:21:55.560
but I think if you look at
1:21:55.560 --> 1:21:57.560
Google I.O. for example
1:21:57.560 --> 1:21:59.560
they just added a camera
1:21:59.560 --> 1:22:01.560
to it where when the alarm goes off
1:22:01.560 --> 1:22:03.560
instead of saying
1:22:03.560 --> 1:22:05.560
hey Google stop you can just
1:22:05.560 --> 1:22:07.560
wave your hand
1:22:07.560 --> 1:22:09.560
so I think they're going to think more of it as
1:22:09.560 --> 1:22:11.560
an agent
1:22:11.560 --> 1:22:13.560
as an assistant truly an assistant
1:22:13.560 --> 1:22:15.560
and an assistant that can see you
1:22:15.560 --> 1:22:17.560
is going to be much more effective than a blind
1:22:17.560 --> 1:22:19.560
assistant so I think these things will
1:22:19.560 --> 1:22:21.560
morph and we won't necessarily think of them as
1:22:21.560 --> 1:22:23.560
quote unquote voice speakers anymore
1:22:23.560 --> 1:22:25.560
just as
1:22:25.560 --> 1:22:27.560
interactive
1:22:27.560 --> 1:22:29.560
access to the internet in the home
1:22:29.560 --> 1:22:31.560
but I still think that
1:22:31.560 --> 1:22:33.560
the biggest use case for those will be
1:22:33.560 --> 1:22:35.560
will be audio so
1:22:35.560 --> 1:22:37.560
for that reason we're investing heavily in it
1:22:37.560 --> 1:22:39.560
and we built our own NLU stack
1:22:39.560 --> 1:22:41.560
to be able to
1:22:41.560 --> 1:22:43.560
the challenge here is
1:22:43.560 --> 1:22:45.560
how do you innovate in that world
1:22:45.560 --> 1:22:47.560
it lowers friction for consumers
1:22:47.560 --> 1:22:49.560
but it's also much more constrained
1:22:49.560 --> 1:22:51.560
you have no pixels to play with
1:22:51.560 --> 1:22:53.560
in an audio only world
1:22:53.560 --> 1:22:55.560
it's really the vocabulary that is the interface
1:22:55.560 --> 1:22:57.560
so we started investing
1:22:57.560 --> 1:22:59.560
and playing around quite a lot with that
1:22:59.560 --> 1:23:01.560
trying to understand what the future will be
1:23:01.560 --> 1:23:03.560
of you speaking and gesturing
1:23:03.560 --> 1:23:05.560
and waving at your music
1:23:05.560 --> 1:23:07.560
and actually you're actually nudging closer
1:23:07.560 --> 1:23:09.560
to autonomous vehicle space
1:23:09.560 --> 1:23:11.560
because from everything I've seen
1:23:11.560 --> 1:23:13.560
the level of frustration people experience
1:23:13.560 --> 1:23:15.560
upon failure of natural language
1:23:15.560 --> 1:23:17.560
understanding is much higher
1:23:17.560 --> 1:23:19.560
than failure in other context
1:23:19.560 --> 1:23:21.560
people get frustrated really fast
1:23:21.560 --> 1:23:23.560
so if you screw that
1:23:23.560 --> 1:23:25.560
experience up even just a little bit
1:23:25.560 --> 1:23:27.560
they give up really quickly
1:23:27.560 --> 1:23:29.560
and I think you see that in the data
1:23:29.560 --> 1:23:31.560
while it's tremendously successful
1:23:31.560 --> 1:23:33.560
the most common interactions
1:23:33.560 --> 1:23:35.560
are play, pause
1:23:35.560 --> 1:23:37.560
and you know next
1:23:37.560 --> 1:23:39.560
the things where if you compare it to taking up your phone
1:23:39.560 --> 1:23:41.560
unlocking it, bringing up the app and skipping
1:23:41.560 --> 1:23:43.560
clicking skip
1:23:43.560 --> 1:23:45.560
it was much lower friction
1:23:45.560 --> 1:23:47.560
but then
1:23:47.560 --> 1:23:49.560
for longer more complicated things
1:23:49.560 --> 1:23:51.560
can you find me that song about people still bring up their phone
1:23:51.560 --> 1:23:53.560
and search and then play it on their speaker
1:23:53.560 --> 1:23:55.560
so we tried again to build a fault tolerant UI
1:23:55.560 --> 1:23:57.560
where for the more
1:23:57.560 --> 1:23:59.560
complicated things you can still pick up your phone
1:23:59.560 --> 1:24:01.560
have powerful full keyboard search
1:24:01.560 --> 1:24:03.560
and then try to optimize
1:24:03.560 --> 1:24:05.560
for where there is actually lower friction
1:24:05.560 --> 1:24:07.560
and try to, it's kind of like the
1:24:07.560 --> 1:24:09.560
test autopilot thing
1:24:09.560 --> 1:24:11.560
you have to be at the level where
1:24:11.560 --> 1:24:13.560
you're helpful if you're too smart
1:24:13.560 --> 1:24:15.560
and just in the way people are going to get frustrated
1:24:15.560 --> 1:24:17.560
and first of all
1:24:17.560 --> 1:24:19.560
I'm not obsessed with where it happens
1:24:19.560 --> 1:24:21.560
it's just a good song but let me mention that as a use case
1:24:21.560 --> 1:24:23.560
because it's an interesting one
1:24:23.560 --> 1:24:25.560
I've literally told
1:24:25.560 --> 1:24:27.560
I don't want to say the name of the speaker
1:24:27.560 --> 1:24:29.560
because when people are listening to it
1:24:29.560 --> 1:24:31.560
it'll make their speaker go off
1:24:31.560 --> 1:24:33.560
but I talk to the speaker
1:24:33.560 --> 1:24:35.560
and I say play
1:24:35.560 --> 1:24:37.560
Stairway to Heaven
1:24:37.560 --> 1:24:39.560
and every time
1:24:39.560 --> 1:24:41.560
but a large percentage of the time plays the wrong
1:24:41.560 --> 1:24:43.560
Stairway to Heaven
1:24:43.560 --> 1:24:45.560
it plays some cover of the
1:24:45.560 --> 1:24:47.560
and
1:24:47.560 --> 1:24:49.560
that part of the experience
1:24:49.560 --> 1:24:51.560
I actually wonder from a business perspective
1:24:51.560 --> 1:24:53.560
the Spotify control
1:24:53.560 --> 1:24:55.560
that entire experience
1:24:55.560 --> 1:24:57.560
or no
1:24:57.560 --> 1:24:59.560
it seems like the NLU
1:24:59.560 --> 1:25:01.560
stuff is controlled by the speaker
1:25:01.560 --> 1:25:03.560
and then Spotify stays
1:25:03.560 --> 1:25:05.560
at a layer below that
1:25:05.560 --> 1:25:07.560
it's a good and complicated question
1:25:07.560 --> 1:25:09.560
some of which is dependent
1:25:09.560 --> 1:25:11.560
on the
1:25:11.560 --> 1:25:13.560
partners so it's hard to comment on the specifics
1:25:13.560 --> 1:25:15.560
but
1:25:15.560 --> 1:25:17.560
the question is the right one
1:25:17.560 --> 1:25:19.560
the challenge is
1:25:19.560 --> 1:25:21.560
if you can't use any of the personalization
1:25:21.560 --> 1:25:23.560
we know which Stairway to Heaven
1:25:23.560 --> 1:25:25.560
and the truth is maybe for one person
1:25:25.560 --> 1:25:27.560
it is exactly the cover that they want
1:25:27.560 --> 1:25:29.560
to be very frustrated
1:25:29.560 --> 1:25:31.560
I think
1:25:31.560 --> 1:25:33.560
we default to the right version
1:25:33.560 --> 1:25:35.560
but you actually want to be able to do the cover
1:25:35.560 --> 1:25:37.560
for the person that just played the cover 50 times
1:25:37.560 --> 1:25:39.560
or Spotify is just going to seem stupid
1:25:39.560 --> 1:25:41.560
so you want to be able to leverage the personalization
1:25:41.560 --> 1:25:43.560
but you have this stack
1:25:43.560 --> 1:25:45.560
where you have the
1:25:45.560 --> 1:25:47.560
the ASR and this thing called the end best list
1:25:47.560 --> 1:25:49.560
or the end best guesses
1:25:49.560 --> 1:25:51.560
here and then the personalization comes in at the end
1:25:51.560 --> 1:25:53.560
you actually want the personalization to be here
1:25:53.560 --> 1:25:55.560
when you're guessing about what they actually meant
1:25:55.560 --> 1:25:57.560
we're working with these partners
1:25:57.560 --> 1:25:59.560
and it's a complicated
1:25:59.560 --> 1:26:01.560
it's a complicated thing
1:26:01.560 --> 1:26:03.560
where you want to
1:26:03.560 --> 1:26:05.560
so first of all you want to be very
1:26:05.560 --> 1:26:07.560
careful with your users data
1:26:07.560 --> 1:26:09.560
you don't want to share your users data without the permission
1:26:09.560 --> 1:26:11.560
but you want to share some data so that their experience gets better
1:26:11.560 --> 1:26:13.560
so that these partners
1:26:13.560 --> 1:26:15.560
can understand enough but not too much and so forth
1:26:15.560 --> 1:26:17.560
so
1:26:17.560 --> 1:26:19.560
it's really the trick is that
1:26:19.560 --> 1:26:21.560
it's like a business driven relationship
1:26:21.560 --> 1:26:23.560
where you're doing product development across companies
1:26:23.560 --> 1:26:25.560
together
1:26:25.560 --> 1:26:27.560
which is really complicated
1:26:27.560 --> 1:26:29.560
but this is exactly why we built our own NLU
1:26:29.560 --> 1:26:31.560
so that we actually
1:26:31.560 --> 1:26:33.560
can make personalized guesses
1:26:33.560 --> 1:26:35.560
because this is the biggest frustration
1:26:35.560 --> 1:26:37.560
from a user point of view they don't understand
1:26:37.560 --> 1:26:39.560
about ASRs and end best lists
1:26:39.560 --> 1:26:41.560
and business deals they're like how hard can it be
1:26:41.560 --> 1:26:43.560
I've told this thing 50 times
1:26:43.560 --> 1:26:45.560
this version and still it plays the wrong thing
1:26:45.560 --> 1:26:47.560
it can't be hard
1:26:47.560 --> 1:26:49.560
so we try to take that user approach
1:26:49.560 --> 1:26:51.560
if the user is not going to understand
1:26:51.560 --> 1:26:53.560
the implications of business we have to
1:26:53.560 --> 1:26:55.560
solve it
1:26:55.560 --> 1:26:57.560
let's talk about sort of a complicated subject
1:26:57.560 --> 1:26:59.560
that I myself
1:26:59.560 --> 1:27:01.560
I'm quite
1:27:01.560 --> 1:27:03.560
torn about
1:27:03.560 --> 1:27:05.560
the idea sort of of
1:27:05.560 --> 1:27:07.560
paying
1:27:07.560 --> 1:27:09.560
artists
1:27:09.560 --> 1:27:11.560
I saw as of August 31
1:27:11.560 --> 1:27:13.560
2018
1:27:13.560 --> 1:27:15.560
over 11 billion dollars
1:27:15.560 --> 1:27:17.560
were paid to rights holders
1:27:17.560 --> 1:27:19.560
and further distributed
1:27:19.560 --> 1:27:21.560
to artists from Spotify
1:27:21.560 --> 1:27:23.560
so a lot of money is being paid to artists
1:27:23.560 --> 1:27:25.560
first of all
1:27:25.560 --> 1:27:27.560
the whole time as a consumer for me
1:27:27.560 --> 1:27:29.560
when I look at Spotify
1:27:29.560 --> 1:27:31.560
I'm not sure I'm remembering
1:27:31.560 --> 1:27:33.560
correctly but I think you said exactly how I feel
1:27:33.560 --> 1:27:35.560
which is this is too good to be true
1:27:35.560 --> 1:27:37.560
like
1:27:37.560 --> 1:27:39.560
when I started using Spotify
1:27:39.560 --> 1:27:41.560
I assumed you guys would go bankrupt
1:27:41.560 --> 1:27:43.560
in like a month
1:27:43.560 --> 1:27:45.560
it's like this is too good
1:27:45.560 --> 1:27:47.560
a lot of people did
1:27:47.560 --> 1:27:49.560
this is amazing
1:27:49.560 --> 1:27:51.560
so one question I have
1:27:51.560 --> 1:27:53.560
is sort of the bigger question
1:27:53.560 --> 1:27:55.560
how do you make money in this complicated world
1:27:55.560 --> 1:27:57.560
how do you deal with the relationship
1:27:57.560 --> 1:27:59.560
with record labels
1:27:59.560 --> 1:28:01.560
who
1:28:01.560 --> 1:28:03.560
are
1:28:03.560 --> 1:28:05.560
complicated
1:28:05.560 --> 1:28:07.560
these big
1:28:07.560 --> 1:28:09.560
you essentially have the task
1:28:09.560 --> 1:28:11.560
of hurting
1:28:11.560 --> 1:28:13.560
cats but like rich
1:28:13.560 --> 1:28:15.560
and powerful cats
1:28:15.560 --> 1:28:17.560
and also
1:28:17.560 --> 1:28:19.560
have the task of paying artists enough
1:28:19.560 --> 1:28:21.560
and paying those labels enough
1:28:21.560 --> 1:28:23.560
and still making money in the internet
1:28:23.560 --> 1:28:25.560
space where people are not willing to pay
1:28:25.560 --> 1:28:27.560
hundreds of dollars a month
1:28:27.560 --> 1:28:29.560
so
1:28:29.560 --> 1:28:31.560
how do you navigate the space
1:28:31.560 --> 1:28:33.560
that's a beautiful description, hurting rich cats
1:28:33.560 --> 1:28:35.560
I've never heard that before
1:28:35.560 --> 1:28:37.560
it is
1:28:37.560 --> 1:28:39.560
very complicated and I think
1:28:39.560 --> 1:28:41.560
certainly
1:28:41.560 --> 1:28:43.560
actually betting against Spotify has been statistically
1:28:43.560 --> 1:28:45.560
a very smart thing to do
1:28:45.560 --> 1:28:47.560
just looking at the
1:28:47.560 --> 1:28:49.560
line of roadkill in music streaming services
1:28:51.560 --> 1:28:53.560
it's kind of
1:28:53.560 --> 1:28:55.560
I think if I understood the complexity
1:28:55.560 --> 1:28:57.560
when I joined Spotify
1:28:57.560 --> 1:28:59.560
fortunately I didn't know enough
1:28:59.560 --> 1:29:01.560
about
1:29:01.560 --> 1:29:03.560
the music industry to understand the complexities
1:29:03.560 --> 1:29:05.560
because then I would have made a more rational guess
1:29:05.560 --> 1:29:07.560
that it wouldn't work
1:29:07.560 --> 1:29:09.560
so ignorance is bliss
1:29:09.560 --> 1:29:11.560
but I think
1:29:11.560 --> 1:29:13.560
there have been a few distinct challenges
1:29:13.560 --> 1:29:15.560
I think as I said
1:29:15.560 --> 1:29:17.560
one of the things that made it work at all
1:29:17.560 --> 1:29:19.560
was that Sweden and the Nordics
1:29:19.560 --> 1:29:21.560
was a lost market
1:29:21.560 --> 1:29:23.560
so there was
1:29:23.560 --> 1:29:25.560
no risk for labels to try this
1:29:25.560 --> 1:29:27.560
I don't think it would have worked
1:29:27.560 --> 1:29:29.560
if the market was
1:29:29.560 --> 1:29:31.560
healthy
1:29:31.560 --> 1:29:33.560
so that was the initial condition
1:29:33.560 --> 1:29:35.560
then we had this tremendous
1:29:35.560 --> 1:29:37.560
challenge with the model itself
1:29:37.560 --> 1:29:39.560
so now
1:29:39.560 --> 1:29:41.560
we're pirating but for the people who bought
1:29:41.560 --> 1:29:43.560
a download or a CD
1:29:43.560 --> 1:29:45.560
the artist would get
1:29:45.560 --> 1:29:47.560
all the revenue for all the future plays
1:29:47.560 --> 1:29:49.560
then right so you got it all up front
1:29:49.560 --> 1:29:51.560
whereas the streaming model was like
1:29:51.560 --> 1:29:53.560
almost nothing they won almost nothing they too
1:29:53.560 --> 1:29:55.560
and then at some point this curve
1:29:55.560 --> 1:29:57.560
of incremental revenue
1:29:57.560 --> 1:29:59.560
would intersect with your day one payment
1:29:59.560 --> 1:30:01.560
and that took a long time to play out
1:30:01.560 --> 1:30:03.560
before
1:30:03.560 --> 1:30:05.560
the music labels
1:30:05.560 --> 1:30:07.560
they understood that but on the artist side
1:30:07.560 --> 1:30:09.560
it took a lot of time to understand
1:30:09.560 --> 1:30:11.560
that actually if I have a big hit that is going to be played
1:30:11.560 --> 1:30:13.560
for many years this is a much better model
1:30:13.560 --> 1:30:15.560
because I get paid based
1:30:15.560 --> 1:30:17.560
on how much people use the product
1:30:17.560 --> 1:30:19.560
not how much they thought they would use it day one
1:30:19.560 --> 1:30:21.560
or so forth
1:30:21.560 --> 1:30:23.560
so it was a complicated model to get across
1:30:23.560 --> 1:30:25.560
but time helped with that
1:30:25.560 --> 1:30:27.560
and now
1:30:27.560 --> 1:30:29.560
the revenues to the music industry actually are bigger
1:30:29.560 --> 1:30:31.560
again
1:30:31.560 --> 1:30:33.560
it's gone through this incredible dip and now they're back up
1:30:33.560 --> 1:30:35.560
and so we're very proud
1:30:35.560 --> 1:30:37.560
of having been
1:30:37.560 --> 1:30:39.560
a part of that
1:30:39.560 --> 1:30:41.560
so there have been distinct problems
1:30:41.560 --> 1:30:43.560
I think when it comes to the
1:30:43.560 --> 1:30:45.560
labels
1:30:45.560 --> 1:30:47.560
we have taken the painful approach
1:30:47.560 --> 1:30:49.560
some of our competition at the time
1:30:49.560 --> 1:30:51.560
they kind of
1:30:51.560 --> 1:30:53.560
looked at other companies and said
1:30:53.560 --> 1:30:55.560
if we just ignore the rights
1:30:55.560 --> 1:30:57.560
we get really big really fast
1:30:57.560 --> 1:30:59.560
we're going to be too big for the
1:30:59.560 --> 1:31:01.560
labels to fail
1:31:01.560 --> 1:31:03.560
they're not going to kill us
1:31:03.560 --> 1:31:05.560
we're going to take that approach
1:31:05.560 --> 1:31:07.560
we went legal from day one
1:31:07.560 --> 1:31:09.560
and we negotiated
1:31:09.560 --> 1:31:11.560
and negotiated and negotiated
1:31:11.560 --> 1:31:13.560
it was very slow, very frustrating
1:31:13.560 --> 1:31:15.560
we were angry at seeing other companies
1:31:15.560 --> 1:31:17.560
taking shortcuts and seeming to get away with it
1:31:17.560 --> 1:31:19.560
it was this game theory thing
1:31:19.560 --> 1:31:21.560
where over many rounds of playing the game
1:31:21.560 --> 1:31:23.560
this would be the right strategy
1:31:23.560 --> 1:31:25.560
and even though
1:31:25.560 --> 1:31:27.560
clearly there's a lot of frustrations
1:31:27.560 --> 1:31:29.560
at times during renegotiations
1:31:29.560 --> 1:31:31.560
there is this weird trust
1:31:31.560 --> 1:31:33.560
honest and fair
1:31:33.560 --> 1:31:35.560
we've never screwed them, they've never screwed us
1:31:35.560 --> 1:31:37.560
it's ten years but
1:31:37.560 --> 1:31:39.560
there's this trust in like
1:31:39.560 --> 1:31:41.560
they know that if music doesn't get really big
1:31:41.560 --> 1:31:43.560
if lots of people do not want to listen
1:31:43.560 --> 1:31:45.560
to music and want to pay for it
1:31:45.560 --> 1:31:47.560
Spotify has no business model
1:31:47.560 --> 1:31:49.560
so we actually are incredibly aligned
1:31:49.560 --> 1:31:51.560
right?
1:31:51.560 --> 1:31:53.560
other companies have other business models
1:31:53.560 --> 1:31:55.560
where even if they made new music
1:31:55.560 --> 1:31:57.560
no money for music
1:31:57.560 --> 1:31:59.560
they'd still be profitable companies
1:31:59.560 --> 1:32:01.560
and I think the industry sees that
1:32:01.560 --> 1:32:03.560
we are actually aligned
1:32:03.560 --> 1:32:05.560
business wise
1:32:05.560 --> 1:32:07.560
so there is this trust
1:32:07.560 --> 1:32:09.560
that allows us to do
1:32:09.560 --> 1:32:11.560
product development even if it's scary
1:32:11.560 --> 1:32:13.560
you know
1:32:13.560 --> 1:32:15.560
taking risks
1:32:15.560 --> 1:32:17.560
the free model itself was an incredible risk
1:32:17.560 --> 1:32:19.560
for the music industry to take
1:32:19.560 --> 1:32:21.560
that they should get credit for
1:32:21.560 --> 1:32:23.560
now some of it was that they had nothing to lose in Sweden
1:32:23.560 --> 1:32:25.560
but frankly a lot of the labels also took risk
1:32:25.560 --> 1:32:27.560
and so I think we built up that trust
1:32:27.560 --> 1:32:29.560
with
1:32:29.560 --> 1:32:31.560
I think hurting a cat sounds a bit
1:32:31.560 --> 1:32:33.560
what's the word
1:32:33.560 --> 1:32:35.560
it sounds like
1:32:35.560 --> 1:32:37.560
dismissive? no every cat matter
1:32:37.560 --> 1:32:39.560
they are all beautiful and very important
1:32:39.560 --> 1:32:41.560
exactly they've taken a lot of risks
1:32:41.560 --> 1:32:43.560
and certainly it's been frustrating on both sides
1:32:45.560 --> 1:32:47.560
it's really like playing
1:32:47.560 --> 1:32:49.560
it's game theory if you play the
1:32:49.560 --> 1:32:51.560
if you play the game many times
1:32:51.560 --> 1:32:53.560
then you can have the statistical outcome
1:32:53.560 --> 1:32:55.560
that you bet on and it feels very painful
1:32:55.560 --> 1:32:57.560
when you're in the middle of that
1:32:57.560 --> 1:32:59.560
I mean there's risk there's trust
1:32:59.560 --> 1:33:01.560
there's relationships from
1:33:01.560 --> 1:33:03.560
just having read the biography
1:33:03.560 --> 1:33:05.560
of Steve Jobs
1:33:05.560 --> 1:33:07.560
similar kind of relationship were discussed
1:33:07.560 --> 1:33:09.560
in iTunes the idea of selling
1:33:09.560 --> 1:33:11.560
a song for a dollar was very uncomfortable
1:33:11.560 --> 1:33:13.560
for labels and
1:33:13.560 --> 1:33:15.560
and there was no
1:33:15.560 --> 1:33:17.560
it was the same kind of thing it was trust
1:33:17.560 --> 1:33:19.560
it was game theory
1:33:19.560 --> 1:33:21.560
as a lot of relationships that had to be built
1:33:21.560 --> 1:33:23.560
and it's really
1:33:23.560 --> 1:33:25.560
terrifyingly difficult
1:33:25.560 --> 1:33:27.560
process
1:33:27.560 --> 1:33:29.560
that Apple could go through a little bit
1:33:29.560 --> 1:33:31.560
because they could afford for that process
1:33:31.560 --> 1:33:33.560
to fail
1:33:33.560 --> 1:33:35.560
for Spotify it seems terrifying because
1:33:35.560 --> 1:33:37.560
you can't
1:33:37.560 --> 1:33:39.560
initially
1:33:39.560 --> 1:33:41.560
I think a lot of it comes down to
1:33:41.560 --> 1:33:43.560
honestly Daniel and his tenacity
1:33:43.560 --> 1:33:45.560
in negotiating which seems like an impossible
1:33:45.560 --> 1:33:47.560
discipline task
1:33:47.560 --> 1:33:49.560
because
1:33:49.560 --> 1:33:51.560
he was completely unknown and so forth
1:33:51.560 --> 1:33:53.560
and also the reason that
1:33:53.560 --> 1:33:55.560
it worked
1:33:55.560 --> 1:33:57.560
but I think
1:34:01.560 --> 1:34:03.560
I think game theory is probably the best way to think about it
1:34:03.560 --> 1:34:05.560
you could straight go straight for this like Nash
1:34:05.560 --> 1:34:07.560
equilibrium that someone is going to defect
1:34:07.560 --> 1:34:09.560
or you play many times
1:34:09.560 --> 1:34:11.560
and you try to actually go for the top left
1:34:11.560 --> 1:34:13.560
the corporations sell
1:34:13.560 --> 1:34:15.560
is there any magical
1:34:15.560 --> 1:34:17.560
reason why Spotify
1:34:17.560 --> 1:34:19.560
seems to have won
1:34:19.560 --> 1:34:21.560
so a lot of people have tried to do
1:34:21.560 --> 1:34:23.560
what Spotify tried to do
1:34:23.560 --> 1:34:25.560
and Spotify has come out
1:34:25.560 --> 1:34:27.560
well so the answer is that
1:34:27.560 --> 1:34:29.560
there's no magical reason because I don't believe in magic
1:34:29.560 --> 1:34:31.560
but I think there are
1:34:31.560 --> 1:34:33.560
there are reasons
1:34:33.560 --> 1:34:35.560
and I think some of them are that
1:34:35.560 --> 1:34:37.560
people have
1:34:37.560 --> 1:34:39.560
misunderstood
1:34:39.560 --> 1:34:41.560
a lot of what we actually do
1:34:41.560 --> 1:34:43.560
the actual
1:34:43.560 --> 1:34:45.560
Spotify model is very complicated
1:34:45.560 --> 1:34:47.560
they've looked at the premium model
1:34:47.560 --> 1:34:49.560
like you can charge 9.99
1:34:49.560 --> 1:34:51.560
for music and people are going to pay
1:34:51.560 --> 1:34:53.560
but that's not what happened
1:34:53.560 --> 1:34:55.560
actually when we launched the original mobile product
1:34:55.560 --> 1:34:57.560
everyone said they would never pay
1:34:57.560 --> 1:34:59.560
what happened was they started on the free product
1:34:59.560 --> 1:35:01.560
and then their engagement
1:35:01.560 --> 1:35:03.560
grew so much that eventually
1:35:03.560 --> 1:35:05.560
they said maybe it is worth
1:35:05.560 --> 1:35:07.560
9.99 right it's
1:35:07.560 --> 1:35:09.560
your propensity to pay gross with your engagement
1:35:09.560 --> 1:35:11.560
so we had this super complicated
1:35:11.560 --> 1:35:13.560
business model where you operate
1:35:13.560 --> 1:35:15.560
two different business model advertising and premium
1:35:15.560 --> 1:35:17.560
products at the same time
1:35:17.560 --> 1:35:19.560
and I think that is hard to replicate
1:35:19.560 --> 1:35:21.560
I struggle to think of other companies
1:35:21.560 --> 1:35:23.560
that run large scale advertising
1:35:23.560 --> 1:35:25.560
and subscription products at the same time
1:35:25.560 --> 1:35:27.560
so I think the business model is actually
1:35:27.560 --> 1:35:29.560
much more complicated than people think it is
1:35:29.560 --> 1:35:31.560
and so
1:35:31.560 --> 1:35:33.560
some people went after just the premium part
1:35:33.560 --> 1:35:35.560
without the free part and ran into a wall
1:35:35.560 --> 1:35:37.560
where no one wanted to pay
1:35:37.560 --> 1:35:39.560
some people went after just
1:35:39.560 --> 1:35:41.560
music should be free just ads
1:35:41.560 --> 1:35:43.560
which doesn't give you enough revenue
1:35:43.560 --> 1:35:45.560
for the music industry
1:35:45.560 --> 1:35:47.560
so I think that combination is
1:35:47.560 --> 1:35:49.560
kind of opaque from the outside
1:35:49.560 --> 1:35:51.560
so maybe I shouldn't say it here and reveal the secret
1:35:51.560 --> 1:35:53.560
but that turns out to be hard
1:35:53.560 --> 1:35:55.560
to replicate
1:35:55.560 --> 1:35:57.560
than you would think
1:35:57.560 --> 1:35:59.560
so there is a lot of brilliant business strategy here
1:35:59.560 --> 1:36:01.560
brilliance or luck
1:36:01.560 --> 1:36:03.560
probably more luck but it doesn't really matter
1:36:03.560 --> 1:36:05.560
it looks brilliant in retrospect
1:36:05.560 --> 1:36:07.560
so let's call it brilliant
1:36:07.560 --> 1:36:09.560
yeah when the books are written it will be brilliant
1:36:09.560 --> 1:36:11.560
you have
1:36:11.560 --> 1:36:13.560
mentioned that your philosophy is to
1:36:13.560 --> 1:36:15.560
embrace change
1:36:15.560 --> 1:36:17.560
so how will the music streaming
1:36:17.560 --> 1:36:19.560
and music listening
1:36:19.560 --> 1:36:21.560
world change over the next
1:36:21.560 --> 1:36:23.560
10 years, 20 years
1:36:23.560 --> 1:36:25.560
you look out into the far future
1:36:25.560 --> 1:36:27.560
what do you think?
1:36:27.560 --> 1:36:29.560
I think that music
1:36:29.560 --> 1:36:31.560
and for that matter audio
1:36:31.560 --> 1:36:33.560
podcast audio books
1:36:33.560 --> 1:36:35.560
I think it's one of the few
1:36:35.560 --> 1:36:37.560
core human needs
1:36:37.560 --> 1:36:39.560
I think there is no good reason to me
1:36:39.560 --> 1:36:41.560
why it shouldn't be at the scale
1:36:41.560 --> 1:36:43.560
of something like messaging or social networking
1:36:43.560 --> 1:36:45.560
I don't think it's a niche thing
1:36:45.560 --> 1:36:47.560
to listen to music or news or something
1:36:47.560 --> 1:36:49.560
so I think scale is obviously one of the things
1:36:49.560 --> 1:36:51.560
that I really hope for
1:36:51.560 --> 1:36:53.560
I hope that it's going to be
1:36:53.560 --> 1:36:55.560
billions of users, I hope eventually
1:36:55.560 --> 1:36:57.560
everyone in the world gets access to
1:36:57.560 --> 1:36:59.560
all the world's music ever made
1:36:59.560 --> 1:37:01.560
so obviously I think it's going to be a much bigger business
1:37:01.560 --> 1:37:03.560
otherwise we wouldn't be betting this big
1:37:05.560 --> 1:37:07.560
now if you look more at how
1:37:07.560 --> 1:37:09.560
it is consumed
1:37:09.560 --> 1:37:11.560
what I'm hoping is back to this
1:37:11.560 --> 1:37:13.560
analogy of the
1:37:13.560 --> 1:37:15.560
software tool chain
1:37:15.560 --> 1:37:17.560
where I think
1:37:17.560 --> 1:37:19.560
sometimes internally
1:37:19.560 --> 1:37:21.560
I make this analogy to
1:37:21.560 --> 1:37:23.560
text messaging
1:37:23.560 --> 1:37:25.560
text messaging was also based on
1:37:25.560 --> 1:37:27.560
standards
1:37:27.560 --> 1:37:29.560
in the area of mobile carriers
1:37:29.560 --> 1:37:31.560
you had the SMS, the 140 character
1:37:31.560 --> 1:37:33.560
120 carat SMS
1:37:33.560 --> 1:37:35.560
and it was great
1:37:35.560 --> 1:37:37.560
because everyone agreed on the standard
1:37:37.560 --> 1:37:39.560
so as a consumer you got a lot of distributions
1:37:39.560 --> 1:37:41.560
and interoperability but it was a very constrained format
1:37:41.560 --> 1:37:43.560
and when the industry
1:37:43.560 --> 1:37:45.560
wanted to add pictures to that format
1:37:45.560 --> 1:37:47.560
to do the MMS, I looked it up
1:37:47.560 --> 1:37:49.560
and I think it took from the late 80s to early 2000
1:37:49.560 --> 1:37:51.560
this is like a 15, 20 year product cycle
1:37:51.560 --> 1:37:53.560
to bring pictures into that
1:37:53.560 --> 1:37:55.560
now once that entire
1:37:55.560 --> 1:37:57.560
value chain
1:37:57.560 --> 1:37:59.560
of creation and consumption got wrapped
1:37:59.560 --> 1:38:01.560
in one software stack
1:38:01.560 --> 1:38:03.560
within something like Snapchat or WhatsApp
1:38:03.560 --> 1:38:05.560
the first week
1:38:05.560 --> 1:38:07.560
they added disappearing messages
1:38:07.560 --> 1:38:09.560
then two weeks later they added stories
1:38:09.560 --> 1:38:11.560
the pace of innovation when you're on one software stack
1:38:11.560 --> 1:38:13.560
you can
1:38:13.560 --> 1:38:15.560
affect both creation and consumption
1:38:15.560 --> 1:38:17.560
I think it's going to be rapid
1:38:17.560 --> 1:38:19.560
so with these streaming services
1:38:19.560 --> 1:38:21.560
we now for the first time in history
1:38:21.560 --> 1:38:23.560
have enough I hope people
1:38:23.560 --> 1:38:25.560
on one of these services
1:38:25.560 --> 1:38:27.560
actually whether it's Spotify or Amazon
1:38:27.560 --> 1:38:29.560
or Apple or YouTube
1:38:29.560 --> 1:38:31.560
and hopefully enough creators
1:38:31.560 --> 1:38:33.560
can do the format again
1:38:33.560 --> 1:38:35.560
and that excites me
1:38:35.560 --> 1:38:37.560
I think being able to change these constraints from 100 years
1:38:37.560 --> 1:38:39.560
that could really
1:38:39.560 --> 1:38:41.560
do something interesting
1:38:41.560 --> 1:38:43.560
I really hope it's not just going to be there
1:38:43.560 --> 1:38:45.560
iteration on the same thing
1:38:45.560 --> 1:38:47.560
for the next 10 to 20 years as well
1:38:47.560 --> 1:38:49.560
yeah changing the creation
1:38:49.560 --> 1:38:51.560
of music or creation of audio
1:38:51.560 --> 1:38:53.560
or creation of podcasts
1:38:53.560 --> 1:38:55.560
is a really fascinating possibility
1:38:55.560 --> 1:38:57.560
I myself don't understand
1:38:57.560 --> 1:38:59.560
what it is about podcasts that's so intimate
1:38:59.560 --> 1:39:01.560
it just is I listen to a lot of podcasts
1:39:01.560 --> 1:39:03.560
I think it touches
1:39:03.560 --> 1:39:05.560
on a human on a deep
1:39:05.560 --> 1:39:07.560
human need for connection
1:39:07.560 --> 1:39:09.560
that people do feel like they're
1:39:09.560 --> 1:39:11.560
connected
1:39:11.560 --> 1:39:13.560
to when they listen I don't understand
1:39:13.560 --> 1:39:15.560
what the psychology that is
1:39:15.560 --> 1:39:17.560
but in this world is becoming
1:39:17.560 --> 1:39:19.560
more and more disconnected
1:39:19.560 --> 1:39:21.560
it feels like
1:39:21.560 --> 1:39:23.560
this is fulfilling a certain kind of
1:39:23.560 --> 1:39:25.560
need and
1:39:25.560 --> 1:39:27.560
empowering the creator as opposed
1:39:27.560 --> 1:39:29.560
to just the listener
1:39:29.560 --> 1:39:31.560
is really interesting
1:39:31.560 --> 1:39:33.560
I'm really excited that you're working on this
1:39:33.560 --> 1:39:35.560
yeah I think one of the things that is inspiring
1:39:35.560 --> 1:39:37.560
for our teams to work on podcasts
1:39:37.560 --> 1:39:39.560
is exactly that
1:39:39.560 --> 1:39:41.560
whether you think like I probably do
1:39:41.560 --> 1:39:43.560
that it's something biological about
1:39:43.560 --> 1:39:45.560
perceiving to be in the middle of the conversation
1:39:45.560 --> 1:39:47.560
that makes you listen in a different way
1:39:47.560 --> 1:39:49.560
it doesn't really matter people seem to perceive it
1:39:49.560 --> 1:39:51.560
differently and
1:39:51.560 --> 1:39:53.560
there was this narrative for a long time that
1:39:53.560 --> 1:39:55.560
you know if you look at video
1:39:55.560 --> 1:39:57.560
it's something kind of in the foreground it got shorter
1:39:57.560 --> 1:39:59.560
and shorter and shorter because of financial
1:39:59.560 --> 1:40:01.560
pressures and monetization and so forth
1:40:01.560 --> 1:40:03.560
and eventually at the end there's almost like
1:40:03.560 --> 1:40:05.560
20 seconds clip
1:40:05.560 --> 1:40:07.560
people just screaming something
1:40:07.560 --> 1:40:09.560
and
1:40:09.560 --> 1:40:11.560
I'm really I feel really good about
1:40:11.560 --> 1:40:13.560
the fact that
1:40:13.560 --> 1:40:15.560
you could have interpreted that as people have
1:40:15.560 --> 1:40:17.560
no attention span anymore
1:40:17.560 --> 1:40:19.560
they don't want to listen to things they're not interested
1:40:19.560 --> 1:40:21.560
in deeper stories
1:40:21.560 --> 1:40:23.560
like you know people are getting dumber
1:40:23.560 --> 1:40:25.560
but then podcast came along and it's almost like no
1:40:25.560 --> 1:40:27.560
no the need still existed
1:40:27.560 --> 1:40:29.560
once but maybe maybe it was
1:40:29.560 --> 1:40:31.560
the fact that you're not prepared to look at your
1:40:31.560 --> 1:40:33.560
phone like this for two hours
1:40:33.560 --> 1:40:35.560
but if you can drive at the same time it seems like
1:40:35.560 --> 1:40:37.560
people really want to dig deeper
1:40:37.560 --> 1:40:39.560
and they want to hear like the more complicated version
1:40:39.560 --> 1:40:41.560
so to me that is very inspiring
1:40:41.560 --> 1:40:43.560
that podcast is actually long form
1:40:43.560 --> 1:40:45.560
it gives me a lot of hope for
1:40:45.560 --> 1:40:47.560
for humanity that people seem really interested
1:40:47.560 --> 1:40:49.560
in hearing deeper more complicated
1:40:49.560 --> 1:40:51.560
conversations this is
1:40:51.560 --> 1:40:53.560
I don't understand it
1:40:53.560 --> 1:40:55.560
it's fascinating so the majority
1:40:55.560 --> 1:40:57.560
for this podcast listen to the whole thing
1:40:57.560 --> 1:40:59.560
this whole conversation
1:40:59.560 --> 1:41:01.560
we've been talking for an hour and 45 minutes
1:41:01.560 --> 1:41:03.560
and somebody will
1:41:03.560 --> 1:41:05.560
I mean most people will be listening
1:41:05.560 --> 1:41:07.560
to these words I'm speaking right now
1:41:07.560 --> 1:41:09.560
you wouldn't have thought that 10 years ago
1:41:09.560 --> 1:41:11.560
where the world seemed to go
1:41:11.560 --> 1:41:13.560
that's very positive I think
1:41:13.560 --> 1:41:15.560
that's really exciting and empowering the creator
1:41:15.560 --> 1:41:17.560
there's as really exciting
1:41:17.560 --> 1:41:19.560
last question
1:41:19.560 --> 1:41:21.560
do you also have a passion for
1:41:21.560 --> 1:41:23.560
just mobile in general
1:41:23.560 --> 1:41:25.560
how do you see the smartphone world
1:41:27.560 --> 1:41:29.560
the digital space
1:41:29.560 --> 1:41:31.560
of
1:41:31.560 --> 1:41:33.560
of smartphones
1:41:33.560 --> 1:41:35.560
and just everything that's on the move
1:41:35.560 --> 1:41:37.560
whether it's
1:41:37.560 --> 1:41:39.560
internet of things and so on
1:41:39.560 --> 1:41:41.560
changing over the next 10 years
1:41:41.560 --> 1:41:43.560
and so on
1:41:43.560 --> 1:41:45.560
I think that one way to think about it is that
1:41:45.560 --> 1:41:47.560
computing
1:41:47.560 --> 1:41:49.560
moving out of these
1:41:49.560 --> 1:41:51.560
multi purpose devices
1:41:51.560 --> 1:41:53.560
the computer we had in the phone
1:41:53.560 --> 1:41:55.560
into specific
1:41:55.560 --> 1:41:57.560
specific purpose devices
1:41:57.560 --> 1:41:59.560
and it will be ambient that
1:41:59.560 --> 1:42:01.560
at least in my home
1:42:01.560 --> 1:42:03.560
you just shout something at someone
1:42:03.560 --> 1:42:05.560
and there's always one of these speakers close enough
1:42:05.560 --> 1:42:07.560
and so
1:42:07.560 --> 1:42:09.560
you start behaving differently
1:42:09.560 --> 1:42:11.560
it's as if you have the internet ambience
1:42:11.560 --> 1:42:13.560
ambiently around you and you can ask it
1:42:13.560 --> 1:42:15.560
things
1:42:15.560 --> 1:42:17.560
so I think computing
1:42:17.560 --> 1:42:19.560
will kind of get more integrated
1:42:19.560 --> 1:42:21.560
and we won't necessarily think of it
1:42:21.560 --> 1:42:23.560
as
1:42:23.560 --> 1:42:25.560
connected to a device in the same way
1:42:25.560 --> 1:42:27.560
that we do today
1:42:27.560 --> 1:42:29.560
I don't know the path to that maybe
1:42:29.560 --> 1:42:31.560
we used to have these
1:42:31.560 --> 1:42:33.560
desktop computers
1:42:33.560 --> 1:42:35.560
and then we partially replaced that with
1:42:35.560 --> 1:42:37.560
the laptops and left
1:42:37.560 --> 1:42:39.560
desktop at home and at work and then
1:42:39.560 --> 1:42:41.560
we got these phones and we started leaving
1:42:41.560 --> 1:42:43.560
the laptop at home for a while and maybe
1:42:43.560 --> 1:42:45.560
for stretches of time
1:42:45.560 --> 1:42:47.560
you're going to start using the watch and you can leave
1:42:47.560 --> 1:42:49.560
your phone at home like for a run
1:42:49.560 --> 1:42:51.560
or something and we're on this
1:42:51.560 --> 1:42:53.560
progressive path where
1:42:53.560 --> 1:42:55.560
I think
1:42:55.560 --> 1:42:57.560
what is happening with
1:42:57.560 --> 1:42:59.560
voice is that
1:42:59.560 --> 1:43:01.560
you have an
1:43:01.560 --> 1:43:03.560
interaction paradigm that doesn't
1:43:03.560 --> 1:43:05.560
require
1:43:05.560 --> 1:43:07.560
as large physical devices so I definitely
1:43:07.560 --> 1:43:09.560
think there's a future where you can have
1:43:09.560 --> 1:43:11.560
your Airpods and
1:43:11.560 --> 1:43:13.560
your watch and you can do
1:43:13.560 --> 1:43:15.560
a lot of computing
1:43:15.560 --> 1:43:17.560
and I don't think
1:43:17.560 --> 1:43:19.560
it's going to be this binary
1:43:19.560 --> 1:43:21.560
thing, I think it's going to be like many of us
1:43:21.560 --> 1:43:23.560
still have a laptop, we just use it less
1:43:23.560 --> 1:43:25.560
and so you shift your consumption over
1:43:25.560 --> 1:43:27.560
and
1:43:27.560 --> 1:43:29.560
I don't know about
1:43:29.560 --> 1:43:31.560
AR glasses and so forth
1:43:31.560 --> 1:43:33.560
I'm excited about it, I spent a lot of time in that area
1:43:33.560 --> 1:43:35.560
but I still think it's quite far away
1:43:35.560 --> 1:43:37.560
AR, VR, all of that
1:43:37.560 --> 1:43:39.560
Yeah, VR is happening and
1:43:39.560 --> 1:43:41.560
working, I think the recent
1:43:41.560 --> 1:43:43.560
Oculus Quest is quite impressive
1:43:43.560 --> 1:43:45.560
I think AR is further away
1:43:45.560 --> 1:43:47.560
at least that type of AR
1:43:47.560 --> 1:43:49.560
but I do think
1:43:51.560 --> 1:43:53.560
your phone or watch or glasses understanding
1:43:53.560 --> 1:43:55.560
where you are and maybe what you're looking at
1:43:55.560 --> 1:43:57.560
and being able to give you audio cues about that or you can say
1:43:57.560 --> 1:43:59.560
like what is this and it tells you what it is
1:43:59.560 --> 1:44:01.560
that I think
1:44:01.560 --> 1:44:03.560
might happen, you use
1:44:03.560 --> 1:44:05.560
your watch or your glasses as
1:44:05.560 --> 1:44:07.560
a mouse pointer on reality
1:44:07.560 --> 1:44:09.560
I think it might be a while before
1:44:09.560 --> 1:44:11.560
I might be wrong, I hope I'm wrong but I think it might be a while
1:44:11.560 --> 1:44:13.560
before we walk around with these big lab glasses
1:44:13.560 --> 1:44:15.560
that project things
1:44:15.560 --> 1:44:17.560
I agree with you, it's actually really
1:44:17.560 --> 1:44:19.560
difficult when you have to
1:44:19.560 --> 1:44:21.560
understand the physical world
1:44:21.560 --> 1:44:23.560
enough to project
1:44:23.560 --> 1:44:25.560
onto it
1:44:25.560 --> 1:44:27.560
I lied about the last question
1:44:27.560 --> 1:44:29.560
because I just thought
1:44:29.560 --> 1:44:31.560
of audio
1:44:31.560 --> 1:44:33.560
and my favorite topic which is the movie
1:44:33.560 --> 1:44:37.560
Her, do you think
1:44:37.560 --> 1:44:39.560
whether it's part of Spotify or not
1:44:39.560 --> 1:44:41.560
will have
1:44:41.560 --> 1:44:43.560
I don't know if you've seen the movie Her
1:44:43.560 --> 1:44:45.560
absolutely
1:44:45.560 --> 1:44:47.560
and there
1:44:47.560 --> 1:44:49.560
audio is
1:44:49.560 --> 1:44:51.560
the primary form of interaction
1:44:51.560 --> 1:44:53.560
and the connection with another entity
1:44:53.560 --> 1:44:55.560
that you can actually have a
1:44:55.560 --> 1:44:57.560
relationship with or fall in love with
1:44:57.560 --> 1:44:59.560
based on voice alone
1:44:59.560 --> 1:45:01.560
audio alone
1:45:01.560 --> 1:45:03.560
do you think that's possible first of all
1:45:03.560 --> 1:45:05.560
based on audio alone to fall in love with somebody
1:45:05.560 --> 1:45:07.560
somebody or well yeah let's go
1:45:07.560 --> 1:45:09.560
with somebody, just have a relationship
1:45:09.560 --> 1:45:11.560
based on audio alone
1:45:11.560 --> 1:45:13.560
and second question to that
1:45:13.560 --> 1:45:15.560
can we create an artificial intelligence system
1:45:15.560 --> 1:45:17.560
that
1:45:17.560 --> 1:45:19.560
allows one to fall in love
1:45:19.560 --> 1:45:21.560
with it and her, him
1:45:21.560 --> 1:45:23.560
with you
1:45:23.560 --> 1:45:25.560
so this is my personal answer
1:45:25.560 --> 1:45:27.560
speaking for me as a person
1:45:27.560 --> 1:45:29.560
the answer is quite unequivocally
1:45:29.560 --> 1:45:31.560
yes
1:45:31.560 --> 1:45:33.560
on both
1:45:33.560 --> 1:45:35.560
well we just said about podcasts
1:45:35.560 --> 1:45:37.560
and the feeling of being in the middle of a conversation
1:45:37.560 --> 1:45:39.560
if you could have an
1:45:39.560 --> 1:45:41.560
assistant where
1:45:41.560 --> 1:45:43.560
and we just said that feels like a very personal
1:45:43.560 --> 1:45:45.560
setting so if you walk around with these
1:45:45.560 --> 1:45:47.560
headphones and this thing, you're speaking with this
1:45:47.560 --> 1:45:49.560
thing all of the time that feels like it's in your brain
1:45:49.560 --> 1:45:51.560
I think it's
1:45:51.560 --> 1:45:53.560
it's gonna be much easier to fall in love with
1:45:53.560 --> 1:45:55.560
than something that would be on your screen
1:45:55.560 --> 1:45:57.560
I think that's entirely possible
1:45:57.560 --> 1:45:59.560
and then from the, you can probably answer this better than me
1:45:59.560 --> 1:46:01.560
but from the concept of
1:46:01.560 --> 1:46:03.560
if it's going to be possible
1:46:03.560 --> 1:46:05.560
to build a machine
1:46:05.560 --> 1:46:07.560
that can achieve that
1:46:07.560 --> 1:46:09.560
I think whether you
1:46:09.560 --> 1:46:11.560
think of it as, if you can fake it
1:46:11.560 --> 1:46:13.560
the philosophical zombie that simulates it enough
1:46:13.560 --> 1:46:15.560
or it somehow actually is
1:46:15.560 --> 1:46:17.560
I think there's
1:46:17.560 --> 1:46:19.560
it's only a question, if you ask me about time
1:46:19.560 --> 1:46:21.560
I'd have to give an answer but if you say I've given
1:46:21.560 --> 1:46:23.560
some half infinite time
1:46:23.560 --> 1:46:25.560
absolutely, I think it's just
1:46:25.560 --> 1:46:27.560
atoms and arrangement
1:46:27.560 --> 1:46:29.560
of information
1:46:29.560 --> 1:46:31.560
well, I personally think that love
1:46:31.560 --> 1:46:33.560
is a lot simpler than people think
1:46:33.560 --> 1:46:35.560
so we started with true romance
1:46:35.560 --> 1:46:37.560
and ended in love
1:46:37.560 --> 1:46:39.560
I don't see a better place to end
1:46:39.560 --> 1:46:40.560
beautiful
1:46:40.560 --> 1:46:41.560
Gustav, thanks so much for talking today
1:46:41.560 --> 1:46:55.560
thank you so much, it was a lot of fun