Yeah, no makeup, no good. Flawless skin. Call us Neutrogena commercial. All good to go? Cool. Well, nice to meet you today, Gustav. My name is Miles. This is I guess we are all here. Yes, congratulations on the presentation today and the new announcement of Spotify's newest feature which we can actually dive into. But, I want to start off kind of explaining to people what you do, how you've been in Spotify ever as long as you have been. Kind of like your role.
Sure. So, I joined Spotify late 2008, early 2009 to head up mobile product development for Spotify. Remember, this is the the iPhone had come out, but the App Store wasn't there, but the writing was on the wall. Of course. So, Daniel, the one of the founders of Spotify, and he wanted someone to figure out what Spotify mobile should be. So, that's why I joined. And then after a while, I started heading up product development for Spotify in general. And then later on technology as well. So, I was CPO, CTO, chief product officer and chief technology officer. And I've actually had that role for a long time up until well, January this year when me and another guy from Spotify named Alex Nordstrom became co-CEOs of Spotify. So, Daniel's become chairman of Spotify and he asked me and Alex to step in. And the way that we kind of divide those responsibilities is I am still responsible for the product, the technology, you know, all the servers and AI and all the features. And he's responsible for the business side and the artist side. So, you know, speaking to creators, licensing content and the business side. So, that's roughly how we divide it.
So, since you've been with Spotify for as long as you're saying, coming in at the time when the iPhone was just in its infancy stages, did you ever think Spotify would be where it's at today looking back over 17 years ago now?
Well, that's a good question. And I think the polite thing would be to say, "No, I didn't." But, the truth is that one of the reasons why I joined Spotify and why I've stuck around for so long is that Daniel's ambition was always very high. And this is maybe not so strange for US companies, but for Swedish companies, they're usually very careful. But, Daniel said from day one, "This is going to be a global thing." We even had posters on the wall that kind of said, "Go big or go home." So, so the ambition was always quite quite high. So, in a sense, I expected it, but the probability of reaching it was probably very low, if that makes sense.
As many users as you have now and the spot where you're at, it's quite crazy when you really look at the numbers because correct me if I'm wrong, there's over 500 million users on Spotify.
Even crazier than I ever expected. And that that puts you guys really just in grasp of more people than I I feel like no one could have thought of, especially when smartphones back in the day were really not as popular as they are now. And in the presentation, you're talking about how from desktop to PCs, it was kind of changing in the course of you being at the company. And even in my world in smartphones, I just feel like everybody just knows Spotify at this point. It's like, "Oh, what do you use?" Well, I use Spotify. I've been using it for I think personally since 2014. Yeah, so it's crazy. 750 million users and you guys are still putting things out that actually change how people use the app itself.
We're trying, for sure. I mean, it's it's very humbling, but it's also very rewarding to have that kind of impact on the world. So, that's why why I come to work every day because you can actually change the world a little bit for 750 million people. And if you look at what Spotify does, what I love about the company is we started in music, which I think everyone agrees is a good thing in the world, right? So, so it's a good impact. And then a few years later, we wanted to try to raise our ambitions. So, we went into podcasting because we saw that podcasting was this this format that was unique because people had long, deep discussions in full sentences, actually. And it was sort of an antidote to the shortification that was that was happening. So, we went into that. And then recently, we went into the third category, which is my all-time favorite, which is books.
Oh, yeah. So, so like to have the impact is one thing, but then to have so much positive impact is is very very rewarding. Continuing on from what we're saying, I mean, things are changing. Spotify is still obviously innovating in the space. But, as you take on this co-CEO role at the 20th anniversary of Spotify, which is crazy, it's been 20 years already, right? I mean, time is flying. Is there one part of the company that you feel like Spotify hasn't fully realized yet that you really want to take advantage of in the future?
I would say to some extent in all the areas we're in. So, in in music and podcasting and video and in audiobooks, the way I look at it, they're all they're all full of more opportunities. And And obviously, one of those opportunities is to rethink these products with the help of AI. And in that sense, what I mean is that there's a lot of talk about AI and I think people are kind of sick of AI to some extent. But, I think that there is a there is a really big promise in this new idea of generative AI, which is that they understand English. So, for the longest time, our algorithms were sort of guessing based on skips and swipes what you like. But, it's very hard to interpret sometimes what a skip means. Is it because you hated the song or you loved it, but it was a jazz song at the gym? It's hard for us to know. But, now you can literally in English just tell us, "This is what I like. I don't like that. I used to like that. I don't like it anymore." I think that's a huge promise for consumers to take back control over the algorithms. So, even though I know people are sick of AI, I think if you do it right, it can be very exciting for consumers because it gives them back control over their own lives.
I think personally cuz I mean, I we're both in field you've been in the tech field for as long as I've almost been alive, which means you have a lot of knowledge. But, I feel like on the same page, we're both thinking the same thing. AI, there's great ways it can really help people, but there's some parts that's like people don't want to hear it anymore. Exactly. And today, I feel like people are really asking exactly for what was announced today, which is taste profile. Where you're saying you can really like say, "I don't want to listen to this and I want to listen to this instead." Can you fully just like explain to people what this new taste profile is and how it's changing how you interact with Spotify?
Yeah, for sure. So, we've been on on a journey since we kind of realized what when the whole generative AI thing was happening some years ago, we sat down and tried to think, "Okay, it's it's cool, I guess, but what does it actually mean?" And then we figured out what we think it means. We think it means user control, right? So, so when we develop products, what we used to do is we invited 10 or 20 real people into what is called a focus group. And then we sit and speak to them in English. And we say like, "What do you think of this? What do you think of this? Should the control be there? What do you think of this song?" And we get high-fidelity feedback, but only from a small group of users. The promise of computers finally understanding English is that anyone can talk to Spotify. It's like an always-ongoing user research with everyone in the world. So, you can finally get yours. And we started this journey with AI DJ several years ago where you can talk to the AI DJ. You can say that, you know, "I'm going for a run. Give me an EDM playlist of 160 BPM." And then earlier this year, we launched another feature, which was one more step towards user control, which is called prompted playlist. Where you can literally in English write your own algorithm for a specific playlist, kind of your own Discover Weekly. And And that can be things like go out and search TikTok for what is trending right now, go through it to my taste on Spotify and remove any songs I've already listened to. So, you can write your own algorithm. And then you can schedule that daily or or weekly. And so, what we announced today was just the next step in this journey, which is the taste profile. So, obviously, in Spotify's systems and and databases, we have a profile of who we think you are, kind of music we think you like, podcast and audiobooks. But, the interesting thing is you've never seen that. We've never shown it to you.
Spotify Wrapped is the only way we kind of get an idea.
That's right. In Spotify Wrapped, we could see that people love learning more about who we think they are. So, we figured, "Why don't we just tell you who we think you are in English?" Like, "This is who we think you are musically. These are the podcasts we think you like, the interests you have. These are the books we think you like. Maybe we think you're a sci-fi nerd." But, the cool thing is then there's an edit button where you just say like, "No, I'm not. You think I'm into maybe EDM, but I was for 3 years. Now, I'm tired of it. I want you know, I want classical cuz I used to listen to that when I was younger." So, we kind of show you who we think you are. And now you get to correct the record, which I'm very very excited about.
At what realization did you guys feel like this feature was ready to go? Because it's such a I mean, it can go right and wrong in so many ways on your end because you can switch it up and then go completely off of what people might not like. How many years and how many like testing phases you guys do before you got to the point where like, "We want to give this as a beta to consumers."
Yeah. It's a great question. And it it's going to be as beta to consumers just now or shortly. So, we're still very early and we're still in that testing phase. What we usually do is and I think you're making a great point here. I think there was a point in time where companies built AI features for the sake of AI, not for the sake of the the end user or the or the creator. It was unclear what they were supposed to do. So, the way we think about it, it is a tool that can give you more advanced features, but what is the point of this? Does it really work? So, what we usually do is first we build it for ourselves internally. And you know, we we have many thousands of employees, so they test it. And that is actually having a focus group of, you know, 6, 7,000 people is is a really good test it. So, you get a lot of early signals like, "This is a pipe dream. This doesn't work." In this case, we see people really like it. So, these examples I told you about, they're examples from internal employees who said like, "Finally, you know, I can say like, these two artists, those are my kids. Don't put them on my playlists or or on home, right?"
Music. I mean, that happened to me when I was in college. I guess so. I kept on getting fed like lo-fi beats when I was doing studying.
