We talk to the team behind music streaming sensation Spotify and discover how they have given web users the perfect antidote to piracy.

THE SPOTIFY MUSIC streaming service seemed to appear from nowhere and take the web by storm. Why? Because it’s simple, straightforward and
gives music lovers access to thousands of sounds that would have previously cost a fortune. We talk to Rasmus Andersson, art director at Spotify, who reveals how its creators started on the path to music streaming success, how it works and what it hopes to achieve for the future.

WD: To get started could you tell us a little about Spotify and how and when it all got started?
RASMUS ANDERSSON: One April Day in 2006 our founders, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, were chatting about music and how people consumed more music than ever from an ever-expanding range of artists, but were not necessarily paying for it. The underlying demand for music was bigger than ever but the legal options were few. They hit on the idea of creating a service that would help people listen to whatever music they liked, wherever and whenever they liked. However, they had one major obstacle: technology. How could they provide the same level of user experience with cloud-based media as with locally stored media? By August 2006, a handful of key people were hired and moved into a small office above a coffee shop in central Stockholm. And thus, Spotify was born…

WD: What was the original vision for Spotify and how close is the current version?
RA: The original vision was pretty much what you see today, apart from the music recommendation function and the targeted, integrated ads. We’ve still some way to go in achieving exactly what we set out to do, though. Spotify is a constantly evolving service.

WD: What was the timescale for Spotify? How long did it take from inception to completion.
RA: Spotify is something we’re looking to progressively make better and better, so in one sense we may never reach a true point of completion. But if you define “completion” as “the first working service” then that took 12 months. At that time, we had just released an early closed beta client application to a handful of our friends and family. Our fancy “server park” was in fact a wardrobe with loads of duct-tape and table fans, which used up all the electrical power capacity of the office. Because of this we put (more) duct tape on all unused power sockets and, of course, one day the cleaning lady found an open socket and plugged in the vacuum cleaner. The music stopped for all of our 10-15 users as the fuses blew and the fancy wardrobe went silent. Nowadays we have a large production site in London. And a few more users.

WD: The Spotify brand is effectively a two-tier operation; the web presence and the application. How many web designers were involved in creating the web presence and what were their roles?
RA: The design process has been a collaborative and highly organic affair, involving everyone. When it comes to actual user experience and graphic design I’ve been the one effectively pulling all the strings, but as the demand for music was bigger than ever but the legal options were few. They hit on the idea of creating a service that would help people listen to whatever music they liked, wherever and whenever they liked. However, they had one major obstacle: technology. How could they provide the same level of user experience with cloud-based media as with locally stored media? By August 2006, a handful of key people were hired and moved into a small office above a coffee shop in central Stockholm. And thus, Spotify was born…

WD: What was the original vision for Spotify and how close is the current version?
RA: The original vision was pretty much what you see today, apart from the music recommendation function and the targeted, integrated ads. We’ve still some way to go in achieving exactly what we set out to do, though. Spotify is a constantly evolving service.

WD: What was the timescale for Spotify? How long did it take from inception to completion.
RA: Spotify is something we’re looking to progressively make better and better, so in one sense we may never reach a true point of completion. But if you define “completion” as “the first working service” then that took 12 months. At that time, we had just released an early closed beta client application to a handful of our friends and family. Our fancy “server park” was in fact a wardrobe with loads of duct-tape and table fans, which used up all the electrical power capacity of the office. Because of this we put (more) duct tape on all unused power sockets and, of course, one day the cleaning lady found an open socket and plugged in the vacuum cleaner. The music stopped for all of our 10-15 users as the fuses blew and the fancy wardrobe went silent. Nowadays we have a large production site in London. And a few more users. service continues to grow we’re looking to expand the team. Today we have approximately four people working on our website and will soon start working on a new, more streamlined version. As a company and brand we work hard to understand and integrate what we are rather than what we think we are, or want to be. I believe that’s a very important aspect when it comes to this type of brand – to have a strong sense of self-perception and understand the true value.

WD: Was the Spotify application created in-house or outsourced to a third-party and how long did it take to create?
RA: The Spotify desktop application was created inhouse. We took about one year to take Spotify from a vague idea to fully working application (in the hands of early external beta testers). I believe what helped make this possible was the fact we are a relatively small and tight “family”, fleet-of-foot and with a clear goal.

WD: Testing is an essential part of the development process. What did the process involve for the Spotify website and web app?
RA: Early in the process of developing the desktop application we managed quite a few one-to-one user tests where people – friends and family in the main – were invited to sit down in front of a computer prepped with screen recording software and a build of the then beta-quality application. These tests gave us a rough insight into some of the bigger challenges we would encounter. WD: There are three options for Spotify users; Free, Day Pass and Premium. How has the Free option pushed the rise in popularity of Spotify and how popular are the alternative options? RA: We’ve been bowled over by the take-up of Spotify Premium by our users, who prefer to have an ad-free service and make the most of the exclusive content, pre-releases and competitions. Spotify Free was the original idea and concept which has of course led the way in terms of user take-up, since we opened up access in February (and recently hit 1 million users in the UK). The Day Pass is probably most popular with people who are entertaining guests and want to hear music continuously (we get a lot of people telling us how much fun they had picking out old classics on the night). We’re focusing on strengthening all aspects of the service, and we’ll be seeing additional functions added to Premium in time. We’re very excited about that.

WD: The Spotify library is constantly being updated. Do new artists come to you or do you go to them?
RA: A few of us are in regular contact with record labels and handling requests from labels, artists and other related industry folk. We’ve still only added 50 per cent of the music given to us by the various labels and aggregators, and are currently adding on average 10,000 tracks a day. We’re also currently discussing how to work closer with independent artists who contact us regularly looking to team up with us.

WD: Spotify streams all of its content to users. What is the compromise made between bandwidth consumption and audio quality?
RA: We try not to compromise the quality of the audio as far as most people are able to distinguish, but we do of course compress the audio, currently using the Vorbis audio codec which is a technique similar to MP3 but gives better quality for less bandwidth. Instead of cutting down on audio quality because of bandwidth issues, we look to “spread out” the bandwidth consumption over several different “paths” (peer-to-peer caching, CDN and so on). The client applications also performs caching.

WD: Spotify has a huge library of content. Where is this stored, how is it accessed and what issues arise from dealing with such a large amount of data?
RA: As I mentioned earlier, the Spotify catalogue is currently hosted in a high-security facility in London, where the data is protected both physically and electronically. Without getting lost in too much tech-speak, in short we have loads of storage nodes connected to our distribution servers – everything accessible from the outside is encrypted for security and streamed directly to the client applications.

WD: How does Spotify deal with DRM and any copyright issues?
RA: The music that’s streamed to our users is encrypted, much like how traditional DRM is done but in streaming terms, preventing anyone other than our users to hear the audio encoded in the encrypted data. When it comes to copyright we have agreements in place with relevant rights-holders (eg record labels, publishers and collecting societies) that allow us to deliver Spotify. We like to think of ourselves as a quick, simple and legal alternative to piracy.

WD: We have heard and read rumours of what future versions of Spotify may or may not feature. Can you tell us what you have lined up for the future?
RA: We’re working on some pretty cool features which we’ll be revealing to our users in the near future. I can’t say more than that just yet, other than to say that I’m hugely excited about Spotify’s potential.