Gustav Söderström on user engagement

Gustav Söderström is the Co-Chief Executive Officer of Spotify, the world's largest streaming platform, with more than 760 million users across 180 countries. He earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, founded Kenet Works in 2003 — a mobile community software company acquired by Yahoo! in 2006 — and later co-founded 13th Lab, an augmented reality startup acquired by Facebook's Oculus division. He joined Spotify in 2009 and spent the next 18 years building the product and technology organization from the inside, rising from Chief Product and Technology Officer to Co-President before becoming Co-CEO alongside Alex Norström at the start of 2026. Spotify survived an existential challenge from Apple, which launched Apple Music in 2015 and told its teams internally they would kill Spotify within six months. Spotify's answer was a three-part strategy: a stronger free tier, superior personalization, and ubiquity across non-Apple hardware. All three bets paid out. The throughline in everything both Söderström and Spotify build is a conviction that media should be time well spent. Spotify surveyed users anonymously across major platforms and found that Gen Z valued roughly 90% of their time on Spotify, while regret rates on competing platforms topped 60%. That data formalized what had been an instinct: expand only into categories that are good for users — music, podcasts, audiobooks, fitness. He believes this is not just the right thing to do; it is what makes Spotify durable. His current bet is that AI gives every user a direct conversation with the product — and that Spotify should be first. He has been preparing since 2017, when he read the Transformer paper days after publication and evangelized internally. His principle: periods of change are when market share moves, and the companies that win are the ones that get there first. Show notes: https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/gu... Made possible by Ramp: ⁠https://ramp.com AppLovin: https://axon.ai/senra Deel: https://deel.com/senra Follow David Senra X: https://x.com/davidsenra Instagram:   / davidsenra   LinkedIn:   / davidsenra   Facebook:   / senrashow   Threads: https://www.threads.com/@davidsenra Spotify: https://spti.fi/TVrr557 Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4msoZtb Website: https://www.davidsenra.com Gustav Söderström X: https://x.com/GustavS LinkedIn:   / gustavsoderstrom   Chapters 00:00:00 How Gustav Prepared To Become CEO 00:02:30 There Is No Right Org 00:05:06 Synchronized Swimming At Spotify 00:09:25 You Ship Your Org Chart 00:10:31 Why Apple's Functional Org Works 00:11:48 Tenure Is The Key 00:13:31 Oracle vs. Elon On Churn 00:16:41 Finding Your North Star 00:18:24 Choosing Pain For Distribution 00:19:21 Prioritize The User Over Yourself 00:23:05 The No Regrets Strategy 00:25:21 Building A Running Playlist With AI 00:27:35 Figuring Out What To Spend Your Life On 00:30:01 Being Honest About Doing Good 00:32:25 The Anti-Engagement Decision 00:34:50 Giving Users Control Of The Algorithm 00:37:57 The 1-9-90 Power Law 00:40:23 Getting Into AI Early 00:43:55 You Are Your Thoughts 00:48:22 Building Tools That Enhance Humanity 00:49:45 The Genius Of The Kindle 00:51:57 When Steve Jobs Came To Kill Spotify 00:54:24 Three Bets Against Apple 00:57:07 Building A Personal AI Agent 01:00:55 Premeditated Media 01:02:27 Who Tells You The Truth 01:05:16 The Vulcan Mind Meld Of Tenure 01:07:28 Hiring For Spikes And Fresh Blood 01:10:14 What Keeps Him Up At Night #davidsenra #spotify