Spotify
Music is universal, yet deeply personal.
As Spotify grows, the challenge lies in scaling curation to meet the needs of billions of listeners globally, while maintaining the emotional connection that defines a great playlist.
Over two summers, I designed tools that empowered Spotify’s editorial teams to scale their strategies by reimagining music curation as a collaboration between human creativity and algorithmic intelligence, laying the foundation for Spotify’s global and localised future.
Date
Summer 2022, Summer 2023
Duration
6 months
Type
Product Management, Product Design
Achievement
Spearheaded 2 tools used by the North America Music Team, impacting curation for 600M daily active listeners.
1. Localisation Dashboard
Details
As Spotify accelerates platform localisation, the question arises: which playlists should we localise—and when? Localisation isn't just translating a tracklist, but also ensuring the cultural relevance and emotional resonance of music in every market.
I designed a dashboard to help the PL10N team prioritise localisation efforts by aligning market data, playlist subtypes, and editor input into a unified system.
Process
Scoping & prioritisation
Content Strategy Insights
Ultimately, I spearheaded the design of a dashboard tool which prioritises 15,000 playlists for localisation, by accounting for the following.
Cultural complexity. Playlists are evaluated based on their cross-cultural resonance, ensuring localisation is impactful. For instance, mood playlists like Happy Hits translate seamlessly, while "Gen-Z coded" playlists like Sad Girl Starter Pack require deeper editorial input.
Dynamic prioritisation. The dashboard combines metrics like DAU, market growth, and tracklist overlap to create a living roadmap to ensure that localisation efforts focus on what matters now to Markets / Editors while adapting to emerging trends.
Empowering Editors. The dashboard augments it by surfacing insights that editors can act upon easily. It keeps human creativity at the forefront while providing the data to scale thoughtfully.
The dashboard sets the stage for a future where localisation of music on Spotify becomes real-time and predictive. The ultimate vision is a globally inclusive Spotify where every playlist feels personal, no matter where you’re listening.
2. Playlist Analytics Tool
Details
How does a playlist’s performance influence listener behaviour? I designed a Playlist Analytics Tool to answer this question, helping editors understand how playlist placements drive streams, saves, and skips.
This tool provided curators with actionable insights, enabling them to craft playlists that resonate with listeners and evolve with their preferences.
Process
Scoping & prioritisation
Research Insights
I worked together with data scientists to build a Playlist Analytics Tool which was shipped at the end of my internship. The tool represents a new era of data-driven storytelling in music curation, with:
Human + machine collaboration. By tracking listener behaviour at the track level, curators could have granular visibility into how individual songs contributed to playlist success.
Optimising for impact. Beyond streams, the tool highlighted other key metrics like skip rates and saves, enabling curators to focus on the holistic impact of their playlists.
Global in perspective: Cross-regional analytics highlight trends and successes that can be scaled across markets.
The long-term vision is a platform where playlists become adaptive, offering a bespoke music experience at scale while aligning with the focus areas of the company.
