3 Small Ways Spotify Can Improve Their Product Dramatically

I love my music. I would be lost without it. I currently have headphones in listening to some Mumford and Sons while punching my keyboard. This morning I listened to Dave Matthews Band during my run. On my way to class today, I listened The Killers new album. Point is, I don’t know what I would do without music.

I think a good portion of Gen Z feels the same way. We love our music.

For the most part Gen Z is mostly on Spotify or Apple Music. I would say the split is 70% Spotify, 30% Apple Music (based on a survey of 25 gen z’ers). With 70% of Gen Z on their platform you wouldn’t think there is much else they could do to improve, but Spotify was only on the first wave of innovation. Robinhood made the stock market zero commission, Netflix made tv streaming a reality, and Spotify made music streaming a reality. These were all huge waves of innovation, but now they are behind us and companies like Spotify need to keep innovating.

Here are three way’s I believe Spotify can innovate and improve their product.

1. Social. As much as music is personal for my generation, it is also very social. Spotify should incorporate a few social features with their product. First, is a direct message feature. When a new song comes out from a popular artist, we want to share it with our friends. Having a direct message feature on Spotify will make sharing seamless and provide a platform for friend groups to talk about music. Second, it should be easy to find your friend’s profiles. My cousin has a really good oldies playlist, but every time I want to play it I have to search his entire name. I want to be able to see who I follow and find their profile quickly.
2. Hardware. Almost every gen Z kid has a small personal speaker, and Spotify should try to take some of this market. The speaker shouldn’t be expensive, my current one is $30 and sounds awesome, but I believe a $50 price point is reasonable. Whether it be a sleek design, better sound, or a pre-sync feature I think Spotify has the team to make a speaker that can beat the current market with an additional feature or two.
3. Spotify Venues, Tickets, and live streams. Ever been looking at your favorite band on Spotify and see that they are performing a concert near you soon? I think Spotify should capitalize on this feature and do a few things. First, start to buy the naming rights on a few venues and second, start a ticket selling platform within their app. If I can listen to music through Spotify, why shouldn’t I be able to buy tickets to a concert too? It can drive a new revenue stream for the company and allow for Spotify to become the go to for all things music. Lastly, at least while Covid is around, Spotify should introduce a live streaming feature for artists to perform on, this way they can get direct all their music toward one platform.

Just a few ideas from how I’ve seen their product. I’m going to listen to some Quinn XCII now.