035 – Spotify bugs bite back

Once again, its Shawn’s turn to share a story. The story he has chosen suggests the success of new products relies on finding a balance of new and familiar features. Spotify's 'Discover Weekly' is a personalised music playlist of 30 songs, chosen based on the user's listening patterns. Matthew Ogle designed the playlist so that it would only include songs which the user had never heard before, but it became popular as the result of a bug in the software. The bug allowed some songs the user had heard before to be included. The story contains a number of meaningful business points, including: people are more receptive to change where there is familiarity; don’t put people too far out of their comfort zone; and mistakes can lead to new, important insights.