Solving Music Discovery for New Spotify Users
Twelve ideas for Spotify's new-user discovery problem, scored with RICE and narrowed to three
✳The problem they went after
New Spotify users who listen two or three days a week struggle to discover new music in their first week, and that first week largely decides whether they stay or churn. Earlier phases established the problem, so this Phase 3 submission takes it as given and goes after the full range of possible answers instead of committing early to one favourite.
✳What they actually did
Sagar generates twelve distinct approaches, from low-risk incremental improvements to ambitious moonshots, then scores each on Reach, Impact, Confidence and Effort. Three come out ahead on combined score and feasibility: an Improve My Mix button at RICE 27 that hands users direct control over their recommendations, a Personalized Welcome Playlist at RICE 12 for an emotional hook on day one, and an Interactive Onboarding Tour pointing new users at discovery features they would otherwise walk past. Annotated wireframes follow for each.
✳What you can take from it
Worth stealing
- Twelve solutions generated before any scoring
- Improve My Mix tops RICE at 27
- Annotated wireframes for each of the top three
- Risk register pairs assumptions with containment plans
Read this if
PMs who jump to one solution and want a repeatable ideation process
The transferable bitTwelve options make the top three defensible in a way a single idea never is. The submission then closes the loop, with a primary metric of onboarding-to-discovery conversion within the first day, four secondary and guardrail metrics, and a risk register mapping each core assumption to its failure mode and a containment strategy.
✳The submission itself
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