As we prepare to launch 2020 Wrapped, we remind ourselves of the challenges we took on and lessons learned to make this year’s experience even better for audio fans, like you, around the world.
The 2019 Wrapped campaign was a first on many fronts. It was the first Wrapped experience to exist in-app, give our listeners a look back on the past 10 years of music and culture, and the first to shine a light on how our artists and podcasters connected with their listeners over the past 10 years.
- Spotify is the best way to listen to music and podcasts on mobile or tablet. Search for any track, artist or album and listen for free. Make and share playlists. Build your biggest, best ever music collection.
- Spotify is the best way to listen to music and podcasts on mobile or tablet. Search for any track, artist or album and listen for free. Make and share playlists. Build your biggest, best ever music collection. Get inspired with personal recommendations, and readymade playlists for just about eve.
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Along with processing a decade’s worth of data for over 240 million active users (you can read more from our data team here), we wanted to take on the challenge of transitioning the Wrapped experience from web-only to in-app. To accomplish this, multiple sub-teams were responsible for a range of functions, including marketing, legal, design, data, and frontend and backend engineering. This undertaking was a company-wide effort and one that was met with both successes and learning experiences.
Setting the stage
We have a number of learnings that we can carry forward like what worked well and what could have been improved — we wanted to share some of those highlights.
The product team is modeled like a startup, which proved beneficial during development; lean, resilient, innovative, risk-taking, and using mistakes as learning opportunities. The goal was to create an engaging, shareable experience for users, and the developer team needed to strike a balance between the product team’s aspirations, minimizing risks, and managing dependencies for execution. It required creativity and flexibility in problem-solving.
Empower the team through clear goals and step aside
The team, composed of different disciplines including Insights, Design, Product and Tech, gathered to define their respective priorities and KPIs. This was very useful for onboarding engineers on to the project, motivating and empowering them to make decisions, and prioritizing, first and foremost, the work. A question like, “Should I fix a bug for sharing or for the stories experience?” was easily answered without bottlenecks. Check devices connected to spotify.
To give users the best native experience possible, the experience needed to be:
![2019 Spotify Apps 2019 Spotify Apps](/uploads/1/3/4/1/134139868/782835474.jpg)
- Simple and intuitive
- Easy to share
- A part of the Spotify experience in look, feel, and function
To determine if these qualifications were met, clear and quantifiable objectives were essential to empowering the engineering team.
A Lean approach
With input from the project stakeholders, a reverse timeline of essential events with key dates and milestones was established, including the go-live date, when the code should be frozen, the date when the Release Candidate would be submitted to the Apple/Google Store, the point at which real data from users/employees would be received, and when to start coding.
To simplify communication and organization, milestones were set for Fridays. It eased decisions around dates, and brought consistency and accountability to set commitments.
To develop a product by the release date, we followed a lean approach to manage the development process. We took an incremental approach to product development and broke down the product vision into the bare bones of an MVP (minimum viable product) — Version 0.1; a stories container with audio and static stories…no animations whatsoever. From there, we began adding features based on the team’s goals for future versions, and delivered version 0.2 to market.
How we built it
The team began as a small group of iOS, Android, and backend engineers working to create a native experience on iOS and Android. It was soon realized that the cost and effort needed to develop the personalized, shareable card for each story and user was underestimated — the decision to either re-scope the functionality or find another solution had to be made quickly.
The initial system design looked liked this:
The engineering team drafted a proposal and built a proof of concept of a backend service that could render those images, in real time, incorporating CEF (a C++ library), using HTML templates and CSS 3.1. The solution was clear, and the question soon became, “how do we staff a team with back-end and web engineers to be flexible with rigid time constraints?”
It’s never too early to get started
We were building a product for the largest marketing initiative of the year. Though we began work earlier than previous years, there were still challenges that made this an intense ride.
Top Songs 2019 Spotify
For a global marketing campaign, localization is an essential consideration. For example, in Japanese, line breaks can change the meaning of a sentence and break a message. And for the first time, right-to-left languages were supported. It wasn’t necessarily groundbreaking, but with the addition of animations like the genre bars or a spinning globe…?.
Numerous corner cases were found along the way simply due to the sheer magnitude of data processed, like what do we do if a user has only listened to podcasts? Or what if they only listened to a handful of podcasts? What if a user only listened to a single genre, or listened to music from one country? These were just a few of the cases we came across. There were many, many more.
![2019 spotify stats 2019 spotify stats](/uploads/1/3/4/1/134139868/301291360.jpg)
Free spotify skip songs. The team needed to be resilient and so did our systems. We handled translations from the backend to have certain flexibility to deal with last minute translation issues. Like 1 hour before going live when a Japanese string was causing the iOS experience to crash for certain users.
The Results
The final system ended up looking like this: https://reumqrr.weebly.com/blog/modified-apk-spotify.
Three days before going live, while doing load testing we realized we needed to scale up traffic estimations. We fine-tuned the GKE configuration, added an additional caching layer for the payload of our downstream dependencies, and removed a race condition in the Image Generator component. And as an additional precaution, we ran a data job to pre-generate some images for the initial peak of traffic — a 42-hour job generating around 535 million images completed 2 hours before going live.
We were happy to say that the 2019 Wrapped campaign was well received and building the native experience was worth the effort and stress to excite/delight audio fans all around the globe.
The fellowship of Wrapped
We’d like to thank the Edison Tribe under the Growth Opportunities Mission, Marketing, Brand + Creative, and all those who contributed to making this project successful. We couldn’t have done it without you. 2020 Wrapped is coming soon, so stay tuned and keep listening!
Whether driving the familiar streets of your daily commute, breaking out the guide book for a road trip, or just going around the corner to grab some milk, the first thing most people do when they get in the car is turn the volume up. And if you already use Spotify to listen to your favorite songs, artists, and podcasts—maybe through your home speaker or Bluetooth headphones—you can easily and seamlessly continue listening from the car.
And your car listening experience keeps getting better. Thanks to new Spotify playlists such as Your Daily Drive, which combines the very best of news talk shows, including the relevancy and personality of the hosts, with the best of audio streaming (on demand, personalized playing and discovery), you can arrive at your destination even more informed. Plus, we’ve made it even easier to sync Spotify with two of the most popular navigation apps, Google Maps and Waze. It’s quick to enable playback controls within the navigation settings, making switching and selecting music as seamless as possible. And, with our integration to Google Assistant, it’s also possible to use your voice to control what you listen to in the car.
From belting out the best songs tobinging a podcast, setting up Spotify in your car is simpler than ever, with a variety of ways to play Spotify through your car speakers. And with a Spotify Premium account, you can save your music and podcasts for offline listening, perfect for when you drive through spotty areas. So no matter what type of car or phone you have, take a look at the options below to see which works best for you. Soon you’ll be well on your way.
Please remember that safety is the #1 priority on the road – ALWAYS observe traffic laws.
NEVER attempt any of these connectivity methods while you are driving, and avoid interacting with your device while your car is in motion.
NEVER attempt any of these connectivity methods while you are driving, and avoid interacting with your device while your car is in motion.
If your car has an AUX or USB socket, using a cable is probably one of the fastest ways to connect.
- Make sure you have the correct type of cable to connect to your phone (you can check with your car’s manufacturer if you don’t know which type you need). Some phones no longer have a phone jack, so you may also need the dongle that came with your phone.
- Find the AUX or USB socket in your car and plug in the cable. (Try looking for it on the center console.)
- Turn on your car and stereo, select the AUX input, then open Spotify and tap play.
Use Bluetooth to go wireless and enjoy all the functionalities of your smartphone or tablet.
- While you’re in park, go to “Settings” in your car stereo or to find the Bluetooth menu, then choose the option to pair your device. Some cars have a voice control button on the steering wheel instead—press that.
- Sync by turning on Bluetooth on both your mobile device and your stereo.
- Select your car, enter the pairing code if needed, then open up Spotify and hit play.
- You’ll see larger, driver-friendly icons in the Now Playing view on your phone, and you’ll also be able to quickly change songs with the Choose Music icon at the bottom of the screen.
- If you have audio controls on your steering wheel, you may now be able to control what you’re listening to from there.
2019 Spotify Stats
Have Android Auto or CarPlay? Lucky you—your car is already Spotify integrated!
- For Android Auto, start your car, plug your phone into the USB port, and play Spotify.
- For CarPlay for iOS, start your car and make sure Siri is on. Plug your phone into the USB port or connect wirelessly. Then, on your iPhone, go to “Settings,” then “General,” then “CarPlay.” Select your car and get listening!
- Check out Spotify Everywhere to see if your car offers the Spotify app built into the dashboard. Just to note, some cars require Spotify Premium for integrated listening.
2019 Spotify Apps Online
Take Spotify along for the ride, no matter where you’re going or what you drive to get there.
Also be sure to check out our Driving Hub, the ultimate pit stop for the best driving music and podcasts. Or, take Spotify for the ride with additional information on how to introduce your car to your favorite music and podcasts.
Spotify 2019 Stats
More of an audio learner? Check out our podcast series, “How to Use Spotify in the Car.”